DuckBasin Pulse is a back-of-the-napkin scout for waterfowl water — and the birds that fly through it. You click a point on your land; it asks four honest questions and answers them with live federal + citizen-science data:
1. Will the dirt hold it? — NRCS SSURGO soil drainage. The clays and
poorly-drained ground an engineer hates are exactly what a duck wants. Tight soil = free liner.
2. How much water falls here? — NOAA Atlas 14 rainfall. Your free fill, if you can keep it.
3. Is there a creek to lean on? — nearby USGS streamgages, in case rain alone won't do it.
4. Are the ducks actually here? — recent Anseriformes observations from iNaturalist (+ eBird when the worker is up). Real people on the ground reporting what they've seen.
Plus: which USFWS migratory flyway you're sitting in, and the best window of the year to see ducks at your latitude.
Then it gives you a plain read: build it, workable, or save your shells — and hands you off to the tools and people who do the real work.
The people who care about ducks and want to hunt ducks built most of the duck land in this country. Ducks Unlimited alone has put over 16 million acres of wetland into conservation since 1937 — that's bigger than West Virginia. Delta Waterfowl protects breeding-pothole habitat across the prairies. USFWS National Wildlife Refuge system runs over 560 refuges on lands often bought with hunter-paid Duck Stamp dollars ($25/year, every drake at the duck blind has one).
Yes, the same folks shoot some ducks. We understand the irony. The ducks understand the trade too — without the impoundments, the levees, the cost-share work and the easement money, most of the bottomland would be row-crops or subdivisions by now. If you're scouting a hole, you're already in the lineage. Take care of the land and the land takes care of itself.
A flooded impoundment or moist-soil unit is real earthwork — water-control structures, levee grades, and often a Section 404 permit. Before you dig, talk to your local NRCS / USDA service center and Ducks Unlimited's habitat programs — there's cost-share money out there (NRCS EQIP/WRE, DU partnerships) for exactly this.
DuckBasin Pulse v0.2.8 · independent civic-tech · duckbasinpulse.com · federal data only (NRCS SSURGO, NOAA Atlas 14, USGS NWIS, USFWS NWI) · a preliminary screening toy, not a regulatory, engineering, or permitting reference. The "duck-hold" read is a rough heuristic, not a guarantee — ground-truth everything. Built on a weekend by somebody who was supposed to be dealing blackjack. 🦆🔴 · info@hydraulictoybox.com