Federation Waterfowl Count
January 11-19, 2003

by Barbara Butler

 
Each January we participate in the Federation of New York State Bird Clubs' annual Waterfowl Count. This year during January 11-19 we spent lots of time looking at frozen water. Only a few lakes had any open water at all. Streams had to be moving quite rapidly to be unfrozen. Dot Fleury remarked that those streams were too fast to suit any ducks. Little was found on the Ten Mile River, which was high (as were most streams) due to drought-breaking precip over the last month or so. Temperatures stayed below freezing through the count period.
 
The river still had some open water. Most places I visited (north of Hyde Park) were about half open/half floating ice. Of course, the river and the rest of the ponds and lakes are all frozen now. We knew "our" ducks had gone south, so we ventured a little into Putnam County (Patterson area, Lake Carmel, etc). Well, they've gone farther south than that!
The counts of most species are down, as expected. Yet the only one dramatically down is Canada Goose. Gadwalls were found for only the second time on the count. We had our highest count (9) of Hooded Mergansers.
   
Special thanks to Chet Vincent and Barb Michelin for leading groups to cover the southern and middle sections of the Hudson, plus quite a few other places around the county.

List of participants: Betsy Carswell, Binnie Chase, Rosa Corbeels, Dot Fleury, Bob & Sue Infante, Rodney Johnson, Alicia Lenhart, Kelly Liao, Barb Michelin, Margaret Phillips, Carena Pooth, Peggy Rudis, Chet Vincent, Barbara Butler, compiler

To compare these results with those of all past counts, see our Waterfowl Count page.

Wings Over Dutchess, February 2003

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