DENHOFF, N.D. _ Duck eggs might not be a deer's favorite food, but at least one small whitetail buck found them to his liking last summer.
A video camera strategically placed next to a duck nest caught the burglarizing buck in the act; he devoured the eggs _ shells and all.
Seeing is believing, as the old saying goes.
"I've never heard of anything like that before," said Nick Conrad, a University of North Dakota senior who will be graduating this spring with a bachelor's degree in fisheries and wildlife biology. "That's something I never knew."
Conrad is among the UND undergraduate students who have gained field research experience the past two summers in central North Dakota as part of a research partnership with Ducks Unlimited and other partners, including the U.S. Geological Survey and The Nature Conservancy.
The project, which is entering its third season, is giving undergraduate wildlife students opportunities in a setting traditionally reserved for graduate students.
In the process, the research, which involves placing infrared video cameras next to duck nests, is yielding new information about the nesting habits of blue-winged teal and mallards and the predators that prey on their nests.
"It's gone above and beyond our expectations," said Kaylan Carrlson, manager of conservation planning for Ducks Unlimited's Great Plains Regional Office in Bismarck.
