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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire Fish and Game officials are asking residents to leave duck boxes alone.

Wildlife biologists soon will be heading out onto frozen marshes to collect data from hundreds of state-owned boxes set up for for wood ducks and hooded mergansers. Officials say in past years, they’ve found boxes that have been cleaned out of all egg fragment debris and had fresh shavings installed.

Such attempts to help ducks actually ends up removing important data about the birds, and officials are asking people not to tamper with the boxes.

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