We got back in the air for the waterfowl flight on Tuesday, October 14, 2025. I don’t have good news for waterfowl hunters in the area. Water level in the Illinois River Valley is much lower than usual, and a few of the larger refuges in the Central MS River Valley don’t yet have water. […]
We got up in the air for the waterfowl flight on Friday, September 19, 2025. It was much of the same this week as the Illinois river level continued to drop, and many of the connected backwaters exposed more mudflats. Abundances continue to be lower than long-term averages across both rivers, though the difference is […]
Quick update from the survey last Thursday, September 11. The Illinois River continues to drop, but the freshly exposed mudflats won’t have time to grow new food before the end of the growing season. While this year’s trend in blue-winged teal migration seems to match that of previous years, abundance is quite lower. Blue-winged teal […]
Wind and rain forced another late-week flight, but we managed the aerial waterfowl survey of the Illinois and central Mississippi rivers on Friday, November 1st. Duck abundance was on par with the long-term average in the Illinois River valley, but below LTA along the central MS River. I estimated ~263,310 ducks in the IRV on […]
We got back up in the air on Thursday, October 24th, for the aerial waterfowl survey of the Illinois and central Mississippi rivers. Unfortunately, fog kept us out of the lower Illinois River, and we finished that up on Friday, October 25th. We don’t like to split days on this survey, but sometimes it becomes […]
We got back up in the air on Tuesday, October 15th, for the aerial waterfowl survey of the Illinois and central Mississippi rivers. Overall, duck abundance was low on Tuesday across the survey area. Based on what we’ve been seeing while scouting for trapping over the course of this week, I suspect the recent windy […]
We got up in the air for the 3rd waterfowl flight of 2024 on Monday, September 16. The rain from the Hurricane never quite made it here, so we’re still drying out mudflats and exposing more along the backwaters. We lost some blue wings since last week, especially in the Illinois River Valley (-26%), but […]
We got up in the air for the second waterfowl flight of 2024 on Monday, September 9. We also flew the final fall shorebird flight on Tuesday, September 10th. All files for those surveys are attached. Blue-winged teal abundance was 35% above LTA for the IRV (27,515), but 16% below LTA for the CMRV (5,615) […]
We got up in the air for the first fall waterfowl flight of 2024 on Wednesday, September 4. I found it fitting that, while in the air for the first “teal” flight, the rest of the staff were banding blue-wings as bycatch to kick off our mallard/green-winged teal fall project. I’m not sure which was […]