DUDLEY, Mo. -- When the sound of a child's giggle is louder than the whirring of duck wings and a nearby crowd of 50 people, you know something special is happening, and if you saw the smile on 3-year-old Beckett Kiefer's face Saturday morning, you'd have no doubt.
That was the scene alongside a small, remote wetland on the Otter Slough Conservation Area, south of Dudley, when Beckett tossed a young wood duck into the air and excitedly watched it fly away.
All morning, the laughs and squeals continued as Beckett and about 30 other children participated in the annual Youth Field Day activities at Otter Slough, a longtime collaboration between the Missouri Department of Conservation and the Dexter Greenheads chapter of Ducks Unlimited.
"The Dexter Greenheads DU chapter has been part of the duck banding program at Otter Slough for about 10 years," said Ducks Unlimited Regional Director Martin Anderson. "This is a great opportunity for kids and adults to have a very unique outdoor experience. It's a great example of the partnership between MDC and Ducks Unlimited."
Shortly after daylight, the children and their parents gathered along the north shore of Cypress Lake to see first-hand how fisheries biologists use electrofishing boats and equipment to collect various fish specimens. Fisheries Management Biologist Mike Reed also explained how he places identification tags on some fish to study their movements and catch rates.
After the fish presentation, the children were given the opportunity to place leg bands on locally-trapped mourning doves and wood ducks before releasing them back into the wild, and they got to see how biologists use a cannon net to capture the birds.
"Beckett had a great time handling the birds and releasing them," said his mother, Jeanie Kiefer. "He said he liked putting the bands on the ducks and holding them. That was his favorite part."
That excitement is exactly what organizers are hoping to see.
"We come out every year to try to show the kids a little about what wildlife and fish biologists do in terms of managing wildlife populations," said Reed. "Marking, tagging and banding animals is critical to helping us understand those populations, and this hands-on event lets them see the fun side of what we do. It gives them the opportunity to see real-life conservation in action.
"This puts a face on it for the families and the kids so they truly understand a little bit more about what conservation is and what we do to help maintain those resources for the public, and I think they become a little more vested in their wildlife and fish populations."
The hands-on aspect, Reed said, "really brings things to life, rather than having somebody showing them a picture or telling them about it. It makes it very memorable, and we get a lot of kids who come back over time because they get a vested interest in it. They may become fishermen or duck or dove hunters or what have you, and they're out there remembering what they learned and can explain it to their friends and family."
A big part of the program, said Dexter Greenheads' Mike Wilburn, is "introducing them to something they're going to be responsible for in the future. Hopefully, they'll get interested and they will want to grow up and protect it themselves."
Taking that thought a step farther, Reed said, many children "may decide they like the outdoors so much they could make it a real job when they grow up."