Christine Custer

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) eggs were collected from ten colonies between Clinton, Iowa and Royalton, Minnesota on the Mississippi River in 1993, a year of record floods in the midwestern United States. In the live southernmost colonies where record flooding occurred, Great Blue Herons initiated nesting two weeks later than herons nesting in the five northernmost colonies that were...

Zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) invaded the Great Lakes in the mid-1980s and quickly reached high densities. The objective of this study was to determine current consumption of zebra mussels by waterfowl in the Great Lakes region. Feeding Lesser Scaups (Aythya affinis), Greater Scaups (A. marila), Canvasbacks (A. valisineria), Redheads (A. americana), Buffleheads (Bucephala albeola)...

Lesser scaup (Aythya affinis) winter in the Grand Calumet River—Indiana Harbor Canal (GCR-IHC) drainage into southern Lake Michigan, a polluted oasis in the highly urban and industrial corridor of northern Illinois and Indiana. The GCR-IHC is an important wintering area for lesser scaup in northwestern Indiana, especially after Lake Michigan freezes, because of the lack of other wildlife...

We used radio telemetry to record 198 h of feeding behavior of five Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis) on the Indiana Harbor Canal in northwestern Indiana during January and February 1994. Lesser Scaup fed for short periods of time intermittently during each 24-h period. Lesser Scaup fed a total of 96 min during the day and 226 min during the night. They fed more between sunset and midnight...

Eggs and sibling 1-, 3-, and 5-d-old chicks from seven black-crowned night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) broods were collected from Green Bay, Wisconsin, and analyzed for organochlorines. The concentration (μg/g) of nine organochlorines either decreased (n = 7) or remained the same (n = 2) as the chicks grew older. In contrast, the total mass (μg) of these nine organochlorines increased...

The flow cytometry method (FCM) was employed to determine cellular DNA content of black-crowned night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) embryos and 10-day-old chicks collected at sites differing in types of chemical contamination. The coefficient of variation of DNA content (CV) in blood collected from embryos suggested cytogenetic damage at a site in Louisiana known to be contaminated with...

Redheads are one of five common diving duck species in North America. They are in the same taxonomic group as the pochards or bay ducks and are most similar in appearance and behavior to the canvasback. Smaller body size, late breeding, wintering in southern areas, and tolerance to salt in winter and in breeding areas differentiate the redhead from the canvasback and suggest an...