The Pennsylvania Game Commission always wants to make sure they have information regarding animals and birds within the state. Are there any new nesting sites? Are certain birds changing their diets unexpectedly? What do the migration paths look like?

All of that can be tough at times to answer.

So an idea was born: backpacks.

Not for people, but for ducks.

The Game Commission is equipping ducks with backpacks that contain GPS transmitters to learn more about not only ducks habitat use, but their movements and even reproduction.

“The transmitter, we’ve only been doing it for a couple of years, but we’re teaming up with a bunch of different researchers we’ve been collaborating with. It’s a new project,” Mercy Melo, Pennsylvania Game Commission’s Environmental Education Specialist of the Northcentral Region, said. “The northcentral region put out 15, but we put out 15 in every region. So that’s a total of 75ish among six regions.”

The GPS transmitters are not just being used in Pennsylvania. Melo said New York, Delaware and New Jersey are using similar transmitters to collect data, which is being shared with other states.

“We know ducks are spending their entire lives here in Pennsylvania, and most of the mallards are going to be going to Quebec and Ontario for breeding,” Melo said. “The transmitter helps us figure out where they’re going and survive throughout the year.”

And Melo and the Game Commission believe the information collected will be extremely helpful.

“It’s going to be super valuable just for setting the foundation of what we know about these ducks from a research perspective. ... It’s invaluable that we’re making these decisions with birds biology in mind.”

For decades, people have seen ducks with small aluminum bands on their legs. Banding ducks is nothing knew, and it’s a way the agency has been collecting data with people reporting when they see a band.

The Game Commission aims to band 600 ducks statewide in cooperation with other state agencies within the Atlantic flyway. Each band has a unique number that is recorded in a national database along with information such as the banding location and the duck’s health report.

When a hunter harvests a banded duck, they can report that number to the database to find out where it was banded. That information enables agencies to see where the birds go throughout their lives.

The GPS transmitter helps gather additional information.

The GPS sends a signal every few hours with their location which is transmitted to the Game Commission’s biologists. In simple terms, much like a car using GPS on a phone to plot a trip, the backpacks give the Game Commission a road map of where the birds are traveling to and spending time.

Melo said they use two different trapping methods to get the ducks.

One is a cage with a funnel that ducks can only go in one way. He said the cages have a camera on them to alert Melo and the Game Commission that there’s movement so they can get to the location, band them, put on the transmitter and then release the ducks.

As for the other way to trap the ducks? It involves, well … a rocket net launcher.

“It looks just as cool as it sounds,” Melo said with a laugh.

It involves spreading corn in an area the Game Commission knows ducks hang out, for instance at Indian Park in Montoursville. The Game Commission then clicks a button and the net launches out of the box to capture the ducks.

Melo said the Game Commission also has been testing for bird flu.

“We swab all of them to test for antibodies and the disease itself. So just a couple swabs and the bands are put on,” Melo said.

Putting transmitters onto the ducks takes a few additional minutes compared to the banding, Melo noted.

“The backpacks, mostly the straps as if you were wearing one, are made of elastic because when they migrate, they get muscular and during the breeding season, not so much,” Melo said. “We’re putting on little straps and adding super glue to make sure knots don’t come undone.”

The project with GPS transmitters is collaborative and geographically broad. The researcher in charge is based at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and others are at various State University of New York institutes and the University of Delaware.

“All of our data goes right to those students and they analyze the data and put it all together and send it to us at state agencies. We get this report about what our ducks are doing, but since ducks don’t see borders, it’s important to see what New York ducks are doing and so on,” Melo said. “It’s invaluable to have such a network of lots of people collecting data. We couldn’t do it all in Pennsylvania. We have to know what’s happening on a bigger scale.”

The data also extends to studying the habitat quality of ducks in Pennsylvania.

“Since the transmitters are giving us exact coordinates where ducks are spending time, we can see exactly where they’re nesting. If you get the same coordinates day after day after day, they’re probably sitting on a nest,” Melo said. “All of our transmitters are on hens (females). So mostly thinking of habitat in terms of nesting habitat. Being able to know the coordinates of where these birds are hanging out and if it’s on public land, we can forward it to the management crew about wherever they’re spending their time.”

The vast project enables Melo and the Game Commission to help determine management projects.

“Of course the ducks are coming down here in the winter for different parts of their life cycle, we can see what area they’re using the most. If it’s on public land, we can set up management projects,” Melo said. “Whether it’s in the Northern Tier or a good cover habitat further south in Pennsylvania, just trying to identify where they are so we aren’t just doing management without knowing.”