Late November nice weather for ducks
It’s too cold for orioles and swallows. But it’s nice weather for ducks.
It’s part of the almostunending cycle of bird migration in the state. Different species are always leaving and arriving.
By November, the fall songbird migration is done. But winter ducks — not to mention grebes and coots, scoters and loons — are showing up on open water.
They’ve flown in from the far north and northwest, from the pothole prairies of the
High Plains, from Canada and the Arctic.
They aren’t coming to a feeder near you. You have to go out and find them, which means bundling up and braving the weather. But it’s a pleasure to see the new kids in town, knowing that by early spring, they’ll hit the flyways and leave.
Ken Elkins, community conservation manager for Audubon Connecticut, said the Pomperaug River running through the Bent of the River nature center in Southbury is one place to see them.
“Even on a windy day, they’re out and about,” he said.
And, he said, we get to see the drakes at their showiest — lots of dramatic blacks and whites, mixed with daubs of green, reds and russets.
“We’re really present at the peak of their plumage,” he said.
There are always resident, year-round ducks in the state.
Mallards are like blue jays — beautiful, but so common as to merit only a passing glance. Black ducks are the brown ducks that aren’t mallards.
“They’re the most common ducks everywhere,” said Patrick Comins, executive director of the Connecticut Audubon Society, of the state’s two most prominent dabblers.
But Comins said, as autumn nears and the daylight begins to wane, winter ducks begin to move south. If it’s warm and there’s still plentiful food on their nesting grounds, they may linger, putting off the strenuous flight south.
But they have to move to open water to feed and stay alive. And we’re the beneficiaries, getting to see buffleheads, goldeneyes, red-breasted mergansers and more than a dozen other winter waterfowl species as well.
Some only use the state as a stopover, then fly farther south along the Atlantic coastline. Others pass the winter here.
But where, oh where is here?
Angela Dimmett, president of the Western Connecticut Bird Club, said that the best inland place to see winter ducks is Bantam Lake in Litchfield — the state’s largest natural lake “Always,” she said. There — even when it gets really cold and the ice freezes over other ponds — there’s usually open water where the Bantam River flows into the lake. There’s even a small observation tower to scan the flocks at the Point Folly campground, owned by the White Memorial Conservation Center.
“You can get hundreds of ducks there,’’ Dimmitt said.
Comins said both the Housatonic and the Connecticut rivers are good, even underrated places to see wintering ducks. Along the state’s shoreline he said, Long Beach in Stratford and Stratford Point are good places to look for ocean-goers.
And if you’re lucky and patient and have good eyes, you can find a pearl.
Elkins of Connecticut Audubon said he recently stopped to check out a huge flock of Canada geese at a pond at Southbury Training School. Amidst the crowd, he picked out a greater whitefronted goose — a rare northern visitor to the state.
But while the open water is full, the backyard feeders may be down a few species this year.
In years when seed crops in northern Canada fail, Connecticut birders can see flocks of winter finches — common redpolls, purple finches, pine siskins, evening grosbeaks — stopping at their feeders.
This year, the seed crops are hearty and those birds are likely staying north.
Philip Robbins of the Wild Birds Unlimited store in Brookfield said he hasn’t
heard reports of any winter finches.
And with the state’s rainy summer, there’s lots of natural food around here as well.
“People have been saying there’s not been a lot of activity at their feeders until the cold weather came in,” Robbins said.
However, it may be a good year for snowy owls in the state. These beautiful winter visitors show up here depending on the boom-and-bust cycle of the lemming population in the Arctic tundra.
Elkins said if there are snowy owls, he hopes they come in numbers. Otherwise, if there are only one or two, avid birders and photographers tend to mob them.
“That way, they won’t be bothered by the paparazzi,” he said.