Birding Report for December 2024

The winter duck surveys at St. Marks NWR are usually scheduled for mid-month. However, I had been away camping over the Thanksgiving holiday and was curious about any possible effect that the recent cold fronts may have had on the dismally low duck numbers on the November survey. I was hoping that heavy snow and frigid temperatures across the northern US and Canada might have driven ducks down.

So, I went out on Tuesday morning for an off-cycle survey. There were ducks everywhere! I logged 1,893 ducks and twenty Snow Geese. In total I had nineteen species of waterfowl. These numbers are what I would expect on a normal mid-December survey and a major increase from the 342 ducks that I logged two weeks ago.

As usual, Green-winged Teal were the most common duck on the interior ponds, comprising almost half of the surveyed ducks. Redheads came next. Redheads winter in huge numbers out on Apalachee Bay with smaller numbers on the refuge pools. The 308 Redheads on the survey was a higher count than usual, but Redhead numbers can be quite volatile as they shift between the offshore waters and the interior pools. Lesser Scaup and Bufflehead were also in their usual strong numbers.

A flock of twenty Snow Geese on Stony Bayou II was larger than we typically see. There were both white and blue phase birds, about half were juveniles. Hooded Merganser numbers often spike in December and Tuesday’s 177 birds was the highest count that I have ever recorded on a survey. Surprisingly, Blue-winged Teal and American Wigeon numbers were low.

Almost half of the ducks were on Mounds Pool III, where I found 82 Northern Pintail, 15 Mallards and a lone American Black Duck. There were also good numbers of ducks on both East River Pool and Lighthouse Pool. I had smaller numbers on the Stony Bayou Pools and Headquarters Pond, which had most of the refuge’s Gadwalls and Ring-necked Ducks.

I spent eight hours on the refuge on Tuesday, beginning under a starlit sky with scattered frost on the levees and ending on a sunlit afternoon. I found eighty bird species, including a cooperative Cave Swallow. It was a cold, crisp and pure day, the kind of day that birders live for. There are more coming.

The ducks are back. Head down to the refuge.