EACH year several million ducks
pass through the Illinois River valley,
scene of one of the greatest
concentrations of migrating waterfowl in
the United States. Over 90 per cent of the
fall flight is made up of mallards, which
have in recent years found an abundant
food resource in the mechanically picked
corn fields lying adjacent to the bottomland
lakes. Even though corn amounts to
a considerable percentage of the plant diet
of the mallard,* natural waterfowl feeding
grounds still are important. Diving
ducks and most baldpates, gadwalls. teal
and pintails, as well as large numbers of
mallards, congregate principally where
natural food plants are abundant.
For the past 5 years the necessity for improvement
of natural food beds in the
Illinois River valley has been apparent.
The large amount of money and effort
being spent on artificial propagation of
waterfowl food plants prompted the inauguration
in 1937 of a study (Bellrose
1938) to determine the abundance and
interrelation of aquatic plants and to discover optimum methods for management.
Publisher
Champaign : Illinois Natural History Survey
Series/Report Name or Number
Illinois Natural History Survey Bulletin; v. 021, no. 08
ISSN
0073-4918
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/44857
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