Wet conditions beneficial to migrating waterfowl
Texas waterfowlers anticipating the opening of the 2018-19 duck and goose seasons over the coming two weeks have more than the traditional waterfowlrich areas of this sprawling state to consider when trying to decide where to focus their attention.
As this season’s openers approach, Texas waterfowlers’ world has expanded far beyond the state’s long-standing Holy Trinity of the Gulf Coast’s bays, marshes and prairie wetlands, the oxbows and flooded timber in East Texas bottomlands, and the Panhandle’s playa lakes — the three regions where the bulk of the millions of ducks and geese migrating down the Central Flyway each autumn (and the 100,000 or so waterfowlers who pursue them) have traditionally concentrated.
“Just about the whole state looks really good to a duck, right now. The table’s set for them,” said Kevin Kraai, waterfowl program leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. “There’s water on the landscape over such a widespread area that you’re going to see birds in places outside what most think of as the traditional wintering areas — places like the South Texas brush country and the oak/prairie region in north central Texas and even farther west.
“It’s going to be very beneficial as far as the number of ducks we’ll see wintering in Texas. But it has the potential to make things more challenging for hunters because birds are going to be spread over such much wider area, they’re going to have a lot more places to go than in drier years and they’re going to be lot more sensitive to hunting pressure.”
Weather a major factor
The scenario facing arriving waterfowl and Texas waterfowlers results from the wild swings the state’s always fickle weather has taken over the past months.
From January through July, the 15,600-acre Justin Hurst Wildlife Management Area in Brazoria County had received only one inch more rain that the coastal marsh/prairie tract during the record-setting drought of 2011, said David Butler, central coast waterfowl and wetlands biologist for TPWD. Other areas of the coast and prairie saw a similar, if not quite as extreme, dry spell. The result was a deterioration of wetland habitat as salinity levels in marshes spiked and interior wetlands evaporated.
Dry conditions in the Panhandle — some areas went almost eight months without measurable rain — left only about 1 percent of playa wetlands holding water. And an unusually dry July and August shriveled many of the stock tanks and farm ponds and other man-made wetlands in south, central and north central Texas.
“A lot of places were looking like they were out of the ballgame game,” Kraai said of waterfowl habitat conditions in late summer.
That dramatically changed as September arrived.
“It started raining, and it hasn’t stopped,” Matt Nelson, who heads TPWD’s Central Coast Wetlands programs and oversees the agency’s extensive wildlife management areas along the mid-coast, said last week. “It’s been a blessing and a curse.”
More than 23 inches of rain, half of it during September, fell on the Hurst WMA between the final week of August and the middle of October, and flooding forced the closure of Mad Island WMA on the opening weekend of the September teal-only hunting season. But the siege of rain recharged prairie wetlands and dropped or washed away highsalinity levels in coastal marshes. That surge of freshwater triggered a flush of growth of submerged aquatic vegetation such as wigeongrass, a crucial native forage plant for wintering waterfowl, Nelson and Butler said.
“Wigeongrass can grow very fast under the right conditions,” Butler said. “If it stays fairly warm, we could see a lot of growth in the next few weeks. That’s great, because it’s food that really counts for wintering birds.”
Offering a solid food supply is one reason Butler believes that, even with the surfeit of shallow water where waterfowl can settle, areas that have an abundance of forage will draw steady streams of birds.
“It’s the food that counts. And just because you have water doesn’t mean you have food,” Butler said. “That’s why management of wetlands by landowners and hunting club operators is even more important in years like this.
“People who managed their wetlands during the year — did the work and spent the money — and have wetlands that hold a good crop of aquatic vegetation and other food are going to reap the benefits,” Butler said. “The birds are going to find that food.”
Early autumn’s heavy, persistent rains were not limited to the coast. Widespread rains over almost all parts of Texas over the last month have drenched the state, swelling rivers to overflowing from East Texas to the edge of the Permian Basin and from South Texas to the Panhandle.
That rain put an incredible amount of water on the landscape, filling stock tanks from the Rio Grande Valley through South Texas, the Hill Country, oak savanna/prairie and Cross Timber regions and into the Rolling Plains of north central Texas. A series of Pacific weather systems that moved over Mexico and into the Panhandle dropped heavy rains that recharged playas from Lubbock and to the north.
“Some places went from ‘out of the game,’ to ‘back in the game,’ almost overnight,” Kraai said.
Boon for north central Texas
The rains particularly benefited the oak savanna/prairie, Cross Timbers and Rolling Plains areas of north central Texas — a reach of Texas that has become an increasingly important waterfowl wintering areas in the state.
Originally a region short on wetlands, the area now holds hundreds of thousands of manmade stock tanks and farm ponds. As many as a half-million or more of these wetlands — some smaller than an acre and some well over 100 acres — speckle the landscape in a density of as many as seen to nine per square mile. During recent years, that north central Texas region, especially the reach either side of a line from Fort Worth to Abilene, has held more wintering waterfowl than the coastal bays, marshes and prairie long considered Texas’ premier wintering waterfowl habitat.
Similarly, but to a slightly lesser degree, the tens of thousands of farm ponds and stock tanks in South Texas have become increasingly attractive to wintering waterfowl. As with the north central region of the state, those small wetlands offer wintering waterfowl forage (aquatic vegetation and invertebrates) and access to nearby small-grain agriculture for more forage as well as refuge from hunters and other harassment.
In years when these areas are wet, they winter tremendous numbers of waterfowl, Kraai said.
“Even if each pond can support only a handful of birds, if you multiply that by a half-million or more ponds, you see how many birds can use those areas,” he said.
Most years, some areas of this drought-prone state hold good habitat conditions while others hold marginal or poor habitat. Wintering birds flock to those good areas and are absent from the poor habitat.
This year, however, September and October rains have created an abundance of wetland habitat across a huge swath of Texas, including as far west as the San Angelo area.
“It’s rare to see this much water across such a wide areas of the state, including areas that are almost always too dry to hold good habitat,” Kraai said.
In rare “wet” autumns and winters such as this, the number of ducks wintering in Texas can explode, Kraai said. In recent relatively average years, the duck population index estimated though Texas’ midwinter aerial survey totals about 3 million birds.
“When you have a situation like we have now — wet conditions on the scale we’re seeing — that number can double or more,” Kraai said. “Those birds just sense and know where to find good habitat, and we’ll see ducks that usually winter in other states come here.”
A fair number of them already are here.
A strong mid-October cold front that swept over the northern plains pushed a surge of “big” ducks down the flyway and into Texas, where they joined lingering hordes of early-migrating blue-winged. Coastal marshes and adjacent prairie are holding encouraging numbers of pintail, gadwall and wigeon along with concentrations of bluewings and shovelers. Last week’s full moon and a cold front predicted to arrive just ahead of the Nov. 3 opening of duck and goose season in the state’s South Duck Zone should boost those numbers.
And a lot of ducks are headed this way. This year’s breeding population index of the 10 most common duck species pegged the number at 41.2 million. That is down 13 percent from 2017, but 17 percent above the 1955-2017 average. And all of the duck species Texas waterfowlers typically encounter, with the exception of pintail, are well above their long-term average.
Options for birds, hunters
But it may be a bit tougher this season for waterfowlers to consistently see good numbers of those birds over their decoys, thanks to the recent widespread rains.
“When you have so much water on the landscape, the birds have a lot of alternatives,” Butler said. “They aren’t forced to come to a limited number of areas like they are when it’s drier. So the birds are going to be more spread out over a large area instead of concentrated.” Kraai concurs. “Ducks are going to have so many options on where they want to go,” he said. “That’s going to make them a lot more sensitive to hunting pressure. If they get shot at on one pond, they’ve got a lot of places they can go where they won’t be. That’s going to frustrate some hunters.”
But with so much water across Texas, waterfowlers will have a lot of options, too.
Waterfowlers in Texas’ South Duck Zone get to explore those options later this week; the South Zone duck season runs Nov. 3-25 and Dec. 8-Jan. 27. Texas’ North Duck Zone dates are Nov. 10-25 and Dec. 1-Jan. 27, and the season in Texas High Plains Unit runs Oct. 27-28 and Nov. 3-Jan. 27. “Dusky” ducks — mottled duck, black duck, Mexican-like duck and their hybrids — are protected from harvest for the first five days of the duck season in each of the state’s duck zones.
Goose season in the West Goose Zone runs Nov. 3-Feb. 3, with the East Goose Zone season set for Nov. 3-Jan. 27.