check this out!

[Chad Ryan]

here is a band recovered in Mississippi from japan!

http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/general/news/story?id=3200913

[Allen Riggs]

Thats really cool!

[Jeremy DeVries]

That's great. Hiro Nakamura must be a duck hunter.

[wbfowler777]

cool

[jamesmc]

That's great. Hiro Nakamura must be a duck hunter.
I thought I was the only "hero's junkie"

That is unreal that a duck traveled that far........

[goose14]

If that's true, that's really cool. But what if someone got the band from Japan or made it, not saying thats what happened, but have you ever heard of a pintail coming from Japan?

[Andrew Bremseth]

I have heard of bird flu :D

[groundsman3]

i bet tht bird came over here in a boat honestly what are the odds i no it could happen but tht bird prolly ate nothing for a long time it could happen

[QuackerWacker]

I've heard of pintails flying to Hawaii.

[groundsman3]

are u sure they arent raised or brought over to hawaii like pheasants its possiblei t could of happend but thts just what i think but it could of happend

[snowhunter23]

That is simply amazing. I can't believe that pintail flew that far!!

[QuackerWacker]

The info I got about pintails flying to Hawaii came from a DU magazine. Also did you know that some of the bluewing and cinnamon teal that nest on the prairie winter south of the equator? And black brant fly from the Y-K delta in nothern Alaska to the Baja penninsula which has got to be 3 to 4 thousand miles. Migrotory birds are amazing don't under estimate them.

[groundsman3]

very true my mistake ive never heared of tht tho bcuzz tht seems like the only pintail prolly in japan sense god created them lol

[Gooselore]

Banded in Japan, killed in the Delta
Pintail duck an amazing story

Bobby Cleveland • bcleveland@clarionledger.com • January 20, 2008



Special to The Clarion-Ledger
Freddie Scott (above) of LaGrange, Ga., was duck hunting with his son, Freddie III, on Jan. 2 near Ruleville in the Mississippi Delta when he killed a pintail duck that was banded. Oddly enough, the band (left) had been put on the duck in Japan in 2000.
When Freddie Scott's retriever brought him the duck he shot Jan. 2 near Ruleville, the hunter was happy to find a band on one of its legs.

For the unknowing, a banded bird is considered a trophy in duck hunting. Each of the metal tags carries contact information that can lead the shooter to the person(s) who put it there.



Bands are then usually wrapped around a duck call lanyard, forming what each hunter hopes will become a many-jeweled band of honor during his or her career.

Scott, of LaGrange, Ga., had recovered a goose band, but had none from a duck before spotting the one wrapped around the pintail's dangling appendage that day in the Delta.

"I told my son, 'that bird's banded,' " Scott said, "and because he hadn't shot, that it was surely mine. I remembered right after I shot the duck that I looked over and Freddie III was messing with a jammed shotgun.

"Then I moved over to the corner of the blind where was some light coming in so I could read it, and that's when I saw it."

The first word he saw - JAPAN.

"There was no phone number like you usually see on a band," Scott said. "There was just a series of numbers and the words 'Kankyocho-Tokyo Japan,' " he said. "I said out loud 'this ain't right,' and I started thinking somebody was playing a trick."

Who, the dog? Well, no.

Back in Georgia two days later, he began his research.

FREQUENT FLYER MILES
Unsuccessful, Scott got in touch with biologist Jeffrey Lee at the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service in Pearl.

"I figured I killed it in Mississippi, I'd be best to start there,"Scott said.

Good idea. Lee took over the research.

"I contacted several other biologists and finally the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center's Bird Banding Laboratory (in Maryland)," Lee said. "Patuxent referred me to the Yamashina Institute of Ornithology Bird Migration Research Center in Konoyama, Japan."

Lee fired off an e-mail and within 24 hours, he had his answer. Indeed the bird had been banded in Japan, by Ryuhei Honma, a member of the Japanese Bird Banding Association, on Hyoko Lake near the country's northwestern coast.

Furthermore, Honma had banded the bird on Feb. 16 - in the year 2000.

Lee said wild pintails average 2 to 3 years.

"Because the bird was said to have been at least a year old when banded, that means it had to be at least 8 years old," Lee said. "They also said that prior to this, Utah was the farthest a Japan band had been collected."

By GPS, Hyoko Lake is more than 6,700 miles from Ruleville, Miss., as the, uh, duck flies.

"I immediately went to all the people who'd been kidding me about it and proved to them it was real," Scott said.

Thoughts of birds being able to carry the Asian-based avian bird flu did occur to Scott, but he quickly brushed it aside.

"We had a bunch of people at our camp near Ruleville that week and we divvied up the birds so nobody knows who ate it," Scott said. "But I told them, 'hey, any bird that has flown that many miles darn sure ain't sick."

Makes sense.