The mission of Ducks Unlimited is to “conserve, restore, manage and protect wetlands and associated habitats for waterfowl, other wildlife and people.” That being said, a great DU project in the prairie pothole region looks very different from a great DU project on the Delmarva Peninsula. You can see just how far “Delaware ducks” come each year from their preferred nesting territory. This begs the question: What makes a good DU project in Delaware?

When birds begin to arrive in the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays in early September, they are looking for very specific things:

1. Areas safe from predators and other disturbances (creek heads and small wetlands, areas with mixed uplands/ wetlands/open water).

2. Sources of accessible food (native wetland seed in warm weather, flooded crop fields in the coldest weather).

Through their unique design and exacting construction, DU projects in Delaware encourage vigorous growth of high-value native wetland vegetation to help sustain waterfowl through the fall and winter seasons. Like flooded crops, DU projects provide great forage for migrating and wintering waterfall in the fall and winter months. However, unlike corn and bean impoundments, DU project areas provide high-protein forage well into the spring, when hens are consuming invertebrates in preparation for egg-laying.

In addition, DU restoration projects provide high-quality habitat for nongame wildlife throughout the rest of the year by holding natural vegetative cover and mimicking the hydrology of a typical seasonally-flooded Delmarva wetland. Warm-season grass buffers surrounding DU projects can provide valuable nesting habitat for our relatively small population of locally-breeding mallards and black ducks, in addition to larger populations of nongame grassland birds such as bobolinks and grasshopper sparrows.