End-of-Season Duck Survey

I headed down to St. Marks NWR, today, to do my end-of-season duck survey. I vary my morning routines, but lately I’ve been going in on Tram Road and getting out to Stony Bayou II by using 106, a dirt road just past the Helispot that parallels Lighthouse Road. It can be a good owling road.

I drive slowly with my lights off, stop the car every few hundred yards and just listen. This morning I had stopped and was admiring the crescent moon and a cluster of planets when a Chuck-wills -widow began calling. They have only one sound level. LOUD. One more newly arrived Spring migrant..

By the time I got to my listening spot, things were getting interesting. Calling birds included Sora, Virginia & King Rail, Barred & Great Horned Owl, Marsh Wren, Northern Cardinal, Common Gallinule and Blue-winged Teal. I heard the wok of a Black Crowned Night Heron and saw a silhouetted Great Blue Heron glide by, soundlessly. Tricolored Herons and Snowy Egrets began to fly.

I started to count ducks. Effectively on Stony Bayou II right now, this means counting Blue-winged Teal. My protocol as I drive along is: add them if they fly behind me and subtract them if they fly in front of me. Doing this without driving off the levee into the marsh takes some effort. By the time I got to the East end of the pool I had 215 teal.

My duck surveys count waterfowl on the interior ponds and the nearshore Gulf at the lighthouse and the mouth of the St. Marks River. There are always many thousands of Redheads, scaup and Buffleheads further offshore. Duck diversity drops by half in March. Today I had seven species of waterfowl and a total of 367 ducks. Ninety percent of these were Blue-winged Teal, which is typical for mid-March. 

The duck season at St. Marks is October through March. Duck numbers usually build up rapidly to around 2,000 birds by mid-December. They drop sharply in February and again in March. Scaup, Redhead, Northern Shoveler and Red-breasted Merganser come through or linger in low numbers into mid-June.

 Wood Ducks are year-round. Blue-winged Teal start showing up in August and may continue coming through until mid-June. Blue-winged Teal winter further South than other ducks, as far South as Brazil. The extra distance is why they are early and late in migration.

This was a light duck season by numbers. It was a mild winter and that may have led to more ducks wintering further North. St. Marks high duck population numbers this year were about 80% of normal. Over the course of the season I had twenty waterfowl species on my surveys and another species, Greater White-fronted Goose, while birding at the refuge. Each year is different.

There were other things going on today while I birded. Common Loons were migrating. I counted 23 headed North and 10 that aborted and returned. Western Palm Warblers are passing through, heading back to Western Canada. I had three more Swallow-tailed Kites. It was a good day of birding..

Our social patterns are being disrupted, but the natural seasonal patterns are unfolding as normal. Come down to St. Marks NWR and watch. It’s fascinating.