An Extralimital Record of a Louisiana-Banded Mottled Duck Recovered in South Dakota

Abstract

Anas fulvigula (Mottled Duck) primarily occupy coastal marshes along the western Gulf of Mexico and Florida. Previous extralimital records of Mottled Ducks have been recorded in Great Plains states and in some states along the Atlantic Coast. We report on a female Mottled Duck that was banded in 2007 on Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge (Cameron Parish, LA) and harvested near Alpena, SD (Sanborn County). This minimum movement of 1680 km is highly unusual in a species where individuals rarely stray more than 160 km from the coast. Among recent and reliably documented reports (since 1980), this observation represents the northernmost documented record for this species. We presume that this individual migrated north with wintering Anas platyrhynchos (Mallard) it associated with in coastal Louisiana.