In the next several weeks, you may see wildlife researchers catching ducks in the arboretum and carrying them away. Don’t be alarmed: The ducks will be returned and released at the sites where they were caught within about two hours, no worse for the wear.

UC Davis wildlife researchers will be giving the mallards health exams and attaching identification bands to their legs as part of a long-term study of waterfowl and ecosystem health.

The research, funded largely by the National Institutes of Health, is intended to help human and wildlife health specialists better understand the flow of disease-causing organisms through wild and urban ecosystems. This understanding should help improve the health of the ducks, other wild and domestic animals, and people.

Veterinarian Walter Boyce leads the duck study. He is co-director of the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center and an expert on animal pathogens, particularly those carried by wildlife that can cause diseases in domestic animals and people.

Boyce's research team includes veterinarians, other UC Davis faculty members, and graduate and undergraduate students.

After the ducks are lured with grain into traps or under nets, they will be tucked into waterfowl carriers and taken a short distance away for their examinations.

Researchers will take blood and fecal samples, weigh and measure the birds and assess their general health condition, and attach identification bands from the U.S. Geological Survey's Bird Banding Laboratory.

The ducks will be carried back to where they were caught and released within two hours.

To help answer questions for passers-by, researchers will have printed handouts available when working at the arboretum, and more information will be online soon at http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/whc/.