We got up in the air for the first fall waterfowl flight of 2025 on Wednesday, August 27th. We’ll call this week zero since we’re about a week ahead of schedule, earlier than we typically start the flights. There was interest among the lab and our partners in seeing what abundances looked like during the […]
We got up for the aerial waterfowl survey of the Illinois and central Mississippi rivers on Wednesday, November 6th. Duck abundance was below the long-term average along both rivers this week, but especially low relative to LTA on the central MS River. I estimated ~298,000 ducks in the IRV on Friday, a 13% increase from […]
We flew most of the waterfowl survey on Tuesday January 5th and finished up the last of the upper Illinois River on January 8th. Fog and low ceilings plagued us this week above Peoria. Most of the ducks are now gone except for a few mallards, common goldeneyes, and common mergansers. A raft of Canvasbacks […]
We flew the waterfowl survey on Tuesday, December 22nd. Coincidentally, this flight was on the last day of Illinois’ central zone duck season. We had noticeable ice on several of the refuges, especially on the northern reaches of both the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Duck numbers along the Illinois River (249,625) were similar to the […]
We made it back into the air on Tuesday, December 15th following a couple of nights with temperatures in the low 20’s. Consequently, ice returned to many areas along both rivers. Total duck numbers remained 50% and 43% above average along the Illinois (240,805 ducks) and central Mississippi rivers (554,885 ducks). Mallards were the dominant […]
We started the waterfowl survey on Tuesday the 8th, but the weather deteriorated quickly and we had to abandon the flight. We were successful in completing the entire flight on Thursday, December 10th. The ice we witnessed last week was all but gone, and the good news is we still have a few ducks around. […]
We waited until Wednesday of this week (December 2nd) to fly the waterfowl survey. The weather looked good so we decided to see what the cold snap would do to duck numbers. I feared most of the ducks would get out of here with the 20ºF low temps on Monday and Tuesday. Boy was I […]
Well Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! We completed the survey on Monday, November 23rd. Duck numbers on the Illinois River dropped slightly (7%) from the November 17th count. We estimated ~397,000 ducks this week, which is still 37% above average for Thanksgiving. Most noteworthy were the number of greater white-fronted geese at Chautauqua NWR (10,000) and […]
We had a great day for the waterfowl survey on Tuesday, November 17th. The winds weren’t excessive, and we even had some cloud cover part of the day. I prefer to fly with some cloud cover because the direct sunshine and the sun’s reflection off the water aren’t blinding me on overcast days. I know […]
We had to tweak the waterfowl survey a bit this week because my pilot, Mike Cruce, had prior commitments later in the week. In addition, we also had to avoid the rain event moving through the Upper Midwest on Tuesday, and the excessive winds gusting to 26+ mph on Sunday and Monday afternoons. Due to […]