Pintails are one of the takeaways from Joshua Osborn flying the aerial waterfowl survey for the Illinois Natural History Survey on Thursday.
That again that ducks are looking for food and water or, as Osburn more gracefully put it, “birds are congregated where there is food with water on its feet.”
Hint for those heading out tomorrow, Saturday, Oct, 20, for opening day in the central zone waterfowl season.
And the tidbit for this week is “just look for the headlights.”
Click here for details on the aerial waterfowl inventories and the long history of them. Click here for the home site for the Forbes Biological Station; click here for the Facebook page of the station.
The overview of the latest aerial waterfowl survey by Osborn, a waterfowl ecologist for the INHS-Forbes Biological Station, is below:
October 27th , 2022 – Aerial Waterfowl Inventory Blog
We had rough winds earlier in the week, but managed to get the flight in on Thursday, October 27 th . The takeaway from this week is that birds are congregated where there is food with water on its feet. Chautauqua NWR, Swan Lake NWR, and Jack Lake provide the evidence. Abundance of our early migrators continue to build, especially green-winged teal and northern pintail. I estimated 196,330 ducks in the IRV this week, a 30% increase from last week’s count and 9% below the 10-year average (216,549) for this river. Duck abundance increased along the MS river as well. I estimated 161,525 there this week, 17% above the 10-yer average. Chautauqua NWR near Liverpool, IL and Swan Lake near the river confluence continue to hold a high percentage of our ducks in IL. It isn’t unusual for these refuges to hold lots of our ducks in the fall, but the percentages they’re supporting in comparison to the rest of the IRV and CMRV are a little staggering this year. There are lots of things likely at play there, most notably the phenomenal food they’ve produced and the ability to get water on it. Regardless, the greenies and pintails are loving it. Abundance of green-winged teal was well above the 10-year average along both river systems again this week. Similarly, pintails were well above the 10-year in the CMRV, and right at the average in the IRV.
I’ve been plugging our research the last couple of weeks. Enough of that, for now. Let’s talk species. And since we’re hitting the end of October, we may as well talk pintails. Northern pintails (Anas acuta), or sprigs, are one of the most highly sought-after species of duck in North America. They are the graceful flyers, their long necks and long, pointy central tail feathers make them easy to pick out amongst a crowd of dabblers. If you were to pick a plumage that mostly resembled a tuxedo, it would be this one. You might also say there is one that resembles a tuxedo-shirt…..I’m looking at you, northern shoveler…. I digress. In the MS flyway, the bag limit has recently been lowered to 1/hunter for northern pintails. The truth is, elegant though they may be, they’re not very adaptable on the breeding grounds. They’re often early arrivers on the prairies and tend to like very short grasses for nesting cover. As it turns out, many times that means wheat stubble from last year’s harvest which looks like good nesting cover to them but leaves them very open to predators. On the off chance the predators don’t get ‘em, the combines coming through to plant or prep the fields do. There is growing evidence and many heated discussions among researchers regarding the pintail problem and whether it is more of a production issue than a hunting issue. If the former turns out to be the case, we could all enjoy a higher bag limit in the future. I, for one, hope that works out. For those of us in the CMRV and IRV, pintails peak in late October/early November. I love to count them because they’re easy to spot. Just look for the headlights as Yetter liked to say.
Good luck to the north and central zone hunters this weekend! Send us some pictures of your pups holding bull sprigs! For this week’s numbers and more information about the waterfowl survey, check out our webpage at www.bellrose.org. Stay tuned for more updates next week…….
Attached below is the data from the Mississippi River and Illinois River surveys:
