Home Sweet Homing
Ducks retrace a successful route to enhance their odds of surviving and reproducing
When you have good luck at a certain hunting hole, it’s likely you’ll keep that in your pocket for the future. You bagged a limit there once, so it’s a fair assumption that you could have success there again, right? It checks the necessary boxes and you don’t have to expend any more mental or physical energy when it comes time to make a decision on where to hunt.
A similar biological logic is applied by waterfowl throughout their annual cycle. Known as philopatry—or the tendency to return to the same locations year after year—it’s evident in multiple ways: where waterfowl breed, where they spend the winter, where they molt, and where they return for their first breeding season after hatching.
These behaviors highlight the locations waterfowl have on repeat, and they impact and shape population distributions and migration routes at the different stages of the annual cycle.
Breeding-Site Fidelity
For waterfowl, breeding-site fidelity refers to the act of returning to the same breeding location for subsequent years. It’s likely a place they’ve had success in the past and can be as specific as the same exact pond (if it is available) that they choose to breed and raise their broods. It’s an evolutionary trait that comes down to energy expenditure and odds of success—if an area had the resources and safety they needed to be successful in the past, there’s a good chance they could successfully reproduce there again.
“Generally, we’ve observed that breeding-site fidelity is much stronger in hens than drakes,” said Dr. Frank Rohwer, president and chief scientist for Delta Waterfowl. “When they pair on the wintering grounds, females gain benefits from being in their pair and then have to decide where to breed and nest. It’s more beneficial for females because they know the lay of the land.”
Hens face the energy expenditure of breeding. As a result, they know where the resources were last year and where they’re likely to be again.
“Hens not only return to the same pond (breeding territory), but some hens that nested successfully in the prior year returned to the exact same location to nest in the subsequent year,” said Rohwer. “That is, returning to a patch of grass and using the same nest bowl. It is amazing they can even find the exact spot.”
Research has shown that males generally do not return to their “home,” but Delta students observed that if they do, they arrive solo.
“Delta students conducted a study on gadwalls and canvasbacks and found that the males that come home are unpaired males,” said Rohwer. “They would return home, hang out for a while and try to find a mate. In this study, 100% of the time, they would fail to pair with a hen and move on to the next step in their annual cycle.”
Further, research has also shown this breeding-site loyalty is much stronger in geese than ducks. And its likelihood varies by species and differs when comparing juvenile or adult waterfowl.
“Philopatry is a range,” said Rohwer. “You see much higher rates of philopatry in geese than you do in ducks. There’s a whole spectrum, from canvasbacks that act more like geese in terms of their high rates of philopatry to blue-winged teal, which have a relatively short life span and demonstrate lower rates of philopatry. Juvenile waterfowl return home less than adult waterfowl as well.”
And, of course, external factors play a role, including changes in land use, habitat disturbances, or water levels in a certain year.
“It’s easier to be philopatric when your chosen site doesn’t dry out every other year like the prairies do,” said Rohwer. “The different environments that species choose play a role in their likelihood of whether or not they return each year.”
Non-Breeding Site Fidelity
Site fidelity as a more general term is another subset of philopatry that, in this case, refers to repeated use of habitats outside of the breeding season.
For example, waterfowl often return to the same wintering spots year after year. These are the lakes, marshes, and coastal wetlands that reliably provide food, shelter, and safety during the cold months.
This loyalty to their wintering grounds offers several advantages for waterfowl. Familiarity with food, cover, and safe roosting sites reduces the energy spent exploring new areas, increases survival, and positions birds for timely migration back to the breeding grounds. When it comes to management, these patterns help to create predictable population distributions, which help managers and hunters understand where ducks will be during different parts of the year.
“In recent decades, we’ve certainly discovered that wintering ducks do the same things that breeding females do,” said Rohwer. “They show strong rates of philopatry—that the birds that survive often come back to the site that they wintered at last year. Many of them can make beelines for the refuge where they spent most of the winter last year.”
This tendency has also proven true for the molting locations waterfowl choose in late summer.
“Finding an area that offers reliable water and dense vegetation to provide safety from predators is critical for molting,” said Rohwer. “That’s why we see such huge concentrations of waterfowl in traditional molting locations like the Klamath Basin or the Great Salt Lake. These locations have what they need, so waterfowl show high rates of return to these areas each year.”
Why It Matters
Understanding how and why waterfowl return to the same breeding and wintering sites year after year is key to managing and conserving populations.
Researchers study these patterns using tools like banding, GPS satellite telemetry, radio tracking, genetic analysis, and even stable isotopes, which can reveal both large-scale migration trends and precise site loyalty. This helps us to uncover where ducks go, when they arrive, and which habitats they rely on so we can better protect and improve production on the most critical of waterfowl habitats.
Christy Sweigart is associate editor of Delta Waterfowl. Article originally published in Delta Waterfowl's fall 2025 magazine.
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