Please see below (after the transcript and show notes) for links to news and upcoming events.
TRANSCRIPT
From the Cumberland Gap to the Atlantic Ocean, this is
Virginia Water Radio for the week of November 12, 2012.
This week, we drop in on a rich Virginia cultural
tradition—a Saturday-night square dance—where calls of “Duck for the oyster!”
got dancers talking about a key part of Virginia’s rich aquatic-wildlife tradition!
Sound unlikely? Well, just have a
listen for about 50 seconds.
MUSIC AND VOICES.
You’ve been listening to Blacksburg-based string band The
Jugbusters playing at a recent community dance, while several dancers called
out some of the duck species found in
Virginia. About 25 kinds of ducks occur
regularly or occasionally on the Commonwealth’s ponds, streams, wetlands, and
coastal waters. They include dabblers,
like Mallards, which feed from the water surface; divers, like mergansers, which
submerge below the surface to feed; and sea ducks, like the Bufflehead, which
spend part of their life over marine areas.
Some ducks can be found year-round in Virginia, but most species are
winter residents, migrating to spring breeding grounds in Alaska, other
northwestern states, Canada, or Greenland.
Whenever they land in the Old Dominion, ducks are as Virginian as an
old-time string band. Thanks to The
Jugbusters and our duck-name callers for permission to use this week’s music
and sounds.
For other water sounds and music, and for more Virginia
water information, visit our Web site at virginiawaterradio.org,
or call us at (540) 231-5463. From the
Virginia Water Resources Research Center in Blacksburg, I’m Alan Raflo,
thanking you for listening, and wishing you health, wisdom, and good water.
SHOW NOTES
Black Ducks. Photo made available
for public use by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Digital
Library, online at http://digitalmedia.fws.gov, accessed 11-12-12.
Acknowledgments: Music in this episode was performed by Blacksburg, Virginia band The Jugbusters during a November 10, 2012, dance in Blacksburg, and the names of ducks were spoken by people attending that dance; all used with permission. More information about The Jugbusters is available online at https://www.jugbusters.com/.
Sources:
Information on ducks was taken from the “Wildlife
Information” Web page of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries,
at http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/,
which includes the March 2010 “Official List of Native and Naturalized Fauna of
Virginia”; this database
provides maps and detailed accounts of the range and present distribution of
each species in the database (as of 11/12/12); the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service’s Web site “Waterfowl ID,” online at http://www.flyways.us/duck-identification-resources (as of 11/12/12); Life
in the Chesapeake Bay, by
Alice Jane Lippson and Robert L. Lippson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2006; and A Guide to Field
Identification of Birds of North America, by Chandler S. Robbins et al. (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
2001).
Other sources
of information on Virginia ducks include the following:
*Virginia Society of Ornithology at www.virginiabirds.net; or
*Cornell University
Lab of Ornithology’s “Bird Guide” Web site at http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/search, and the Cornell lab’s “Birds of North
America Online” at http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna. Both
Cornell sites include photos, distribution maps, recordings of calls, and
ecological information on birds throughout the Western Hemisphere; a
subscription is required to use the “Birds of North America Online” site.
*E-bird Web site
at http://ebird.org/content/ebird/, maintained by the Cornell Lab and
the Audubon Society. Here you can find
locations of species observations made by contributors, and you can sign up to
contribute your own observations.
Recent Virginia Water
News
For
news relevant to Virginia's water resources, please visit the Virginia Water Central News Grouper,
available online at http://vawatercentralnewsgrouper.wordpress.com/.
Water Meetings and
Other Events
For
events related to Virginia's water resources, please visit the Quick Guide to Virginia Water–related
Conferences, Workshops, and Other Events, online at http://virginiawaterevents.wordpress.com/. The site includes a list of Virginia
government policy and regulatory meetings occurring in the coming week.
