Dry spell brings abnormal bliss
They came in swarms, blurred clusters of feathered darts silhouetted against a sky tinted that singular black- blue few other than water fowlers witness becausewe’re almost the only ones who find ourselves staring at the heavens from the middle of a wetland on Texas’ coastal prairie 40 minutes before sunrise on a clear, cool November morning.
Settled into the blind, decoys out, gear arranged beside us and with 10 minutes or so until legal shooting time, we had that exquisite luxury of witnessing the world coming awake and the rush of wintering waterfowl trading back and forth between roosts and feeding areas.
All manner of ducks were in the air this past Sunday morning. High, groups of pintails with their long necks, trim forms and pointed wings passed in arcs and rough “V” formations. Squads of shovelers, their spatula bills giving them away, swept by, low.
Apair of ducks, larger and obviously darker than the others, with shorter, thicker necks and slightly slower and shallower wing beats, aimed toward our spread before hesitating and taking a wide, curving path perhaps 100 yards around us. Mottled ducks. Natives, and super naturally wary, the pair of “black mallards” had easily spotted the three of us standing in the blind and altered course.
Color us surprised
Thatwas not the case with the clusters of small ducks that peeled from the sky, swung low over the water, wings hissing with a sound like tearing paper, and came rushing with abandon toward the decoys until braking and tumbling to splash landings among the plastics imitations.
Itwas these swarms of small ducks that were most numerous in the twilight, and a steady stream of them fell headlong toward our decoys as shooting time arrived.
When a flock spun past, locked wings and wheeled over the decoys, Todd Steele andRob Sawyer rose and dropped a pair.
But when Nellie, Rob’s no- nonsense Chesapeake Bay retriever ( yes, “nononsense” and “Chesapeake” are redundant), came chugging back with one of the birds, Iwas a bit surprised to see the bird was a green- winged teal.
I knewthe smallish ducks that had been swarming the decoys in the twilight were teal. But I prettymuch assumed they were blue- winged teal.
Bluewings are early migrants, with first waves arriving on the Texas coast as early as August. Good numbers of blue wings hang around Texas, especially coastal prairies and marshes, intoNovember before moving on to wintering grounds in Mexico and points south. Bluewings make up a good chunk of the ducks taken early in the hunting season, especially on coastalwetlands.
Out of the blue
Greenwings are another story. These smallest of ducks are not particularly common in Texas early in the hunting season. Yes, a few greenwingsmake it to Texas as early as September, a nd it’s not unusual to see a few during November. But the big push of greenwings to the Texas coast usually doesn’t happen until December, when cold temperatures and decreasing food supplies father up the Central Fly way force the hardy- for- their- size birds tomove south.
So it was quite surprisingwhen flock after flock of greenwings poured from the sky and on to the Thunderbird Hunting Club wetland on the border of Wharton and Matagorda countieswe hunted aweek ago.
None of us could remember seeing such strong numbers of greenwings so early. Andwe aren’t the only ones.
Through the firstweek of waterfowl season, greenwings have been one of the most commonly taken ducks along Texas’ upper and middle coast. Greenwings have been either the top species taken or one of the two or three top species on duck straps carried from the marsh on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Justin Hurst Wildlife Management Area near Freeport, said Hurst WMA staffer David Hailey.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many greenwings at the start of the season,” Hailey, who has decades of experience in Brazoria County wetlands.
The abundance of greenwings so early in autumn might be just a happy aberration. But, when combined with other admittedly anecdotal evidence, it could reflect impacts environmental conditions are having on waterfowl and Texas waterfowlers this autumn and winter.
Greenwings haven’t been the only birds to showup early and in large number. Almost universally, hunters on Texas coastal prairies and marshes and on inland reservoirs have reported unusually large numbers of coots in wetlands.
“I’ve seen that myself,” said Matt Nelson, a veteran waterfowler and wildlife biologist who heads TPWD’s Central Coast Wetland Ecosystems Project. “The number of coots we’re seeing this year is pretty amazing.”
Those rafts of coots and swarms of greenwings and even what anecdotally is an unusually large and early influx of sandhill cranes into Texas may be a direct result of the drought that seared much of the Midwest this year.
That drought, similar to the one that desiccated Texas in 2011, has shriveled wetlands and greatly reduced grain crops in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and into South Dakota. Waterfowl migrating down the Central Flyway are finding little or no habitat in areas where, inmost years, they spend most or all of the winter.
With no place to stop, those birds are forced to keep moving until they find suitable habitat. Many of them, it appears, aren’t finding what they need until they get to Texas.
Texas’ wetlands are, generally, in much better condition this year than theywere a year ago. Normal or near normal rainfall through most of the year has helped coastal marshes revive and produce a good crop of waterfowl- supporting aquatic vegetation and in- vertebrates. On the coastal prairie, managed wetlands are more abundant than theywere a year ago, although the prairie holds approximately 50,000 fewer acres of rice fields ( crucial wintering habitat for ducks and geese) this year because of reduced availability of water for irrigation in the wake of the 2011 drought.
Crowded wetlands
And those wetlands are drawing big feathered crowds. Reports from coastal marshes and prairie over the past week indicate outstanding numbers of ducks have arrived. Hunter success reflects that abundance. Waterfowlers on private tracts have reported taking six- duck daily limits more often than not.
There are flies in the punch bowl, however. Whilemuch of Texas, including the coast, is wetter than a year ago, it’s been awfully dry the past couple of months. Wetlands are drying out, especially on the prairies.
Ifwaterfowl numbers continue to build along the coast— and the for- real cold front predicted to push across the region today and Monday should bring fresh waves ofmigrating ducks and, likely, the firstmajor push of snowgeese— those birds will crowd into the slowly shrinking habitat and hammer the available forage.
Without fresh rains to maintain or enhance wetlands and fuel growth of aquatic vegetation, many of those birds will be out of space and food by Thanksgiving.
But that’s down the road. Right now, duck hunters are enjoying an unusually good season.