February Duck Survey

I am one of a long line of local birders who have volunteered to do duck and shorebird surveys at St. Marks NWR. You don’t have to be an expert. A lot of birders have the requisite identification skills and it sounds like a good deal, a key to the gates and authorization to drive the levees looking for birds. However, getting to count ducks on a cool crisp day in Winter also means committing to count shorebirds in the August heat while mosquitos are competing with no-see-ums and biting flies for the last drop of your blood.

Yesterday was one of the days that makes this worthwhile. A bright half-moon was hanging just beyond Scorpio’s claws as I headed out to the far end of Stony Bayou at 6:00 am to start my duck survey. Blue-winged Teal were quacking in the fading darkness. When the light came up and I started moving, I found a Western Kingbird along the levee edge. A quartet of Roseate Spoonbills was feeding with Great Egrets in the shallows under the bright blue morning sky. It was a glorious day to be out birding at the refuge.

Duck numbers experience a significant drop between January and February and I had a total of 755 ducks on the February survey, down from 1,946 ducks on the mid-January survey. The biggest drop was in Green-winged Teal numbers, which went from 922 to 334. Blue-winged Teal, Hooded Merganser, Bufflehead, Redhead and Wigeon also saw sharp drops. I found no Northern Pintail, Wood Ducks or Shovelers and ended up with thirteen duck species, which is about average for February.

At this point, changes in duck numbers at the refuge are due not just to St. Marks wintering resident ducks leaving, but also to some degree from ducks passing through from further South. This is especially true of Shovelers, which will see a brief spike in April and Blue-winged Teal, the last of which will pass through in late May.

It’s been an interesting winter duck season at the refuge and we have seen ducks rapidly adjust to changes in the weather. Ducks were slow to come down in a warm Fall and we didn’t get to normal winter numbers until mid-January. Then, when polar fronts pushed extreme winter weather down into North Georgia in late January, I did a spot check and found that that the refuge’s duck population had jumped by 20% to 2,322 as ducks shifted further South. This was mostly due to large numbers of Green-winged Teal and it lasted for only a few days.

Even though the ducks are beginning to leave, all of the most sought-after birds, the female Vermilion, American Black Ducks and White-faced Ibis, are still around for another few weeks and the American Flamingo is still receiving visitors on Mounds Pool III.  It shows no signs of leaving. 

The winter season is drawing to a close and migrants are beginning to move. Swallow-tailed Kite and Great Crested Flycatcher have been reported in the last week. Come down to St. Marks and enjoy your own glorious day of birding.