WaterfowlForum.Net

DComeaux wrote:The land lord lady said she measured 12" for the week, and Saturday was a toad strangler.

BGcorey wrote:I like to go look at things and see what needs to be done.

Lreynolds wrote:

Darren wrote:Can you comment on the following:

1.) Do BW's move down in waves of some kind, sorted in some way? Early males that haven't stayed behind with broods? Other?
2.) When that mass is missed, as in 2017, are we basically SOL for the remainder of the 16 days? and
3.) These birds banded in Port Barre (in spring) opted to go to Texas coast in the subsequent fall migration. Is that common? Did they not imprint on Louisiana? Or is it just a crap shoot of which way they'll head each fall?

Thanks for kicking it around with us

1) Males have no role in brood rearing in most duck species. They "abandon" the hen once she gets into incubation, and goes on about his business of maybe finding another hen (one that lost her nest and has time/energy to renest), molting his wing feathers, and for bluewings, heading south. The first migrants are adult males, followed by females and juveniles.

2) I'm not sure. We almost always miss the first bunch of migrating bluewings that tend to move through in early September, but there is a steady, unpredictable stream in most years. I remember in the late-90's when I happened to be in North and South Dakota during mid to late-September for a string of years, and seeing the LA and TX internet forums light up with "they're here!" and tales of great early-season teal shooting. But all the while, I was seeing HUGE numbers of bluewings in every pothole in SD and ND.

I like to gauge the migration based on the age/sex composition of the harvest, acknowledging that I don't get to see a representative amount of it. On the opening 3-day weekend last year, we worked 2 "picking houses" for avian flu samples in SW LA, and the reports from my guys were that not only did they have about 1/3 of the normal number of birds, but nearly half were females.

Those are generalities. I have no idea how many we miss early vs how many migrate late. In some years a bunch of them stay (usually after a hurricane), and other years they don't. In the 14 years I've been flying the surveys, there seems to be more bluewings staying for the regular duck season compared to the past.

3) Bluewings are considered a "pioneer" species in the old waterfowl literature. They favor shallow-water habitats, which are highly dynamic, and they have the ability to find them when and where they become available. I think imprinting, especially to a winter site, means less to them than say a species like scaup, that exploit a food resource of more stable, predictable habitats.

I haven't followed up to know what a typical recovery distribution for those Port Barre birds looks like. If our season was open, we might have taken a lot more in LA than they did in TX. But remember those birds were banded on their spring migration, where ducks often use different habitats than in the fall.

BGcorey wrote:

Rick wrote:

BGcorey wrote:I like to go look at things and see what needs to be done.

Grandson who hunts on Roger Vincent's Little Chenier piece says it's loaded with "wild rice". (Which I'm guessing is Walter's millet.) Perhaps yours will be, too.

yea that’s the name for it. Haven’t seen it in higher water years, I suppose a drier marsh is presumably more healthier than one which has too much water and either kills favored duck foods or makes it too deep to reach. Oh and the camp I started staying at last year had 3” of rain in the gauge when my neighbor checked it this past sat. Funny how scattered the down pours can be


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Darren wrote:Looks like some pretty good storms rolling that way this afternoon

Rick wrote:

Darren wrote:Looks like some pretty good storms rolling that way this afternoon

Lot of noise but little rain, so far...

Rick wrote:Spent much of the afternoon with "The Pond Doctor" both learning what he felt he could do for our boathouse and watching one of his machines work on one of Cherry Ridge's ponds. Think I prefer grinding on mine to what they're doing as it leaves a berm of spoil around the pond, but it sure will be nice if he can muck the boathouse out deep enough for that to no longer be an issue. Sorry to say I didn't think to take a camera, Dave, as I know you're interested in that sort of thing.

Rick wrote:Pond Doctor backed out on us, presumably for fear his "dredge" wouldn't handle it. Is a couple augers pushing stuff into a 4" centrifugal pump that's easily jammed by wrapped grass. Apparently made for very clean bottoms. Back to the drawing board - or is that "shovel and bucket"?

Rick wrote:Other than a couple one or two nest stops, the Grand Chenier (Money and Tiger island) school sections above 82 are usually the last thing we do, aside from cleaning up little one or two nest spots, and with multiple boats there's a chance I won't see them this year. Pretty sure the Sagreras have Vermilion Corp. and likely anything else worthwhile South of the road and on that side of the refuge, don't know about yours.

Much of what we're doing along the north end of the marsh is so dry that we can only run a boat in it at all when the dew is on, and then with great difficulty: lots marsh busting on foot from where we're stuck to where we flat can't get and much, much, much more manual grass mashing and pushing and pulling the boat's front end to get unstuck. Tried the old Dixie/now Michal White marsh mid morning after working another near our camp yesterday and felt lucky to get back out without ever getting to the first nest. So it's slow enough going that the teal might beat us to Grand Chenier...