Last Thursday I did a shorebird survey with John Murphy. I kept an eBird list going on the side and ended up with just over 200 ducks seen incidentally while we were making our rounds. This was a low number for early November, but numbers go up quickly. Today, I did a duck survey and ended up with 3,937 ducks of 13 species.
Duck numbers don’t usually go up quite that quickly. Let me explain what happened. My duck survey route winds around all of the interior ponds and has two coastal stops; the Lighthouse parking lot and the end of the Lighthouse Levee Trail. The second coastal stop can be good for Common Goldeneye and scoters later in the season. I always run the same route in the same order and with all of the holiday boat traffic expected no ducks.
I had just finished scanning the water with one lone distant Redhead to show for my efforts, when I saw what I thought was a distant flock of White Pelicans. I put the scope on them and it turned out to be an immense straggling flock of ducks. Lines and lines of them. I swung the scope to the front of the flock and began to estimate by hundreds. My final estimate was 3,400 birds. I watched them as they came in and dropped in to land on the bay.
They were much too distant to identify, but I suspect that this was a migratory flock of Redheads just arriving. Redheads, like most ducks, are diurnal migrants and about five percent of North American Redheads winter in Apalachee Bay and adjacent waters, grazing on seagrasses. That may be as many as 35,000 birds. Quite possible that there were Lesser Scaup mixed in. It was quite a sight.
The normal part of the duck survey had 537 ducks, mostly Blue-winged Teal and Redheads, but including seven American Black Ducks. Most of the ducks were on Mounds Pool III and East River Pool. I had four Common Loons flying over Stony Bayou II and an Indigo Bunting at the East end of the Double Dikes.
It was a nice Fall morning with more to follow.
Don Morrow, Tallahassee, FL