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 first few days of the teal migration, and we certainly did that. And you usually don’t need to twist my arm to get me into the survey plane, at least not during this time of year.
Much like 2024, summer drawdowns were effective along many of the Illinois and MS rivers’ backwaters. So far, the waterfowl food production looks above average for the 2025 fall flight in our region. As always, many hunters will depend on timely and reasonable rains over the course of the fall. There is more water on the landscape in the IRV as compared to last year, especially on the upper reach of the river. It’s a good thing these plants like their feet wet. Water is up and into the plants in many backwaters, but it looks like most of it has escaped being overtopped. We’re early yet, so I won’t make comparisons to a 10-year average that is a week ahead, but we did count a reasonable abundance of blue-winged teal, no doubt flying in with the recent cool weather we’ve experienced. I observed 9,890 and 1,160 blue-winged teal along the Illinois and central Mississippi rivers this week, and even saw a few pintail, green-winged teal, and shoveler. There are plenty of ducks in the area to get the blood pumping and get you excited enough to round up the hunting gear. Fall waterfowl migration 2025 is underway, and all is right in the world again!
This week’s numbers and additional information about our surveys are available on our Aerial Inventories page.
