Teal Outlook

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June 30, 2007, 10:53PM

Hunters awaiting data on how teal are doing

Report could tip scales toward a 16-day season

By SHANNON TOMPKINS

Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

Waterfowlers hoping to learn if they'll get a 16-day or 9-day teal season this September and gauge their prospects for seeing another liberal duck season this autumn could have some answers as early as this week.

Federal waterfowl managers this past week were compiling data from just-completed aerial and ground surveys that produce estimates of duck populations and wetland abundance. That's crucial information used in determining the length and bag limits for the 2007-08 hunting season.

The official report will be released within the next two weeks and could come any day.

Wholly anecdotal observations indicate wetland habitat conditions on the main duck nesting areas of Canada and the north-central United States are, overall, very similar to those of a year ago. If anything, ducks found decent nesting habitat across a wider area than they did a year ago.

Odds are very good, observers said, that the population index of blue-winged teal will exceed the

4.7 million birds necessary to trigger a 16-day September teal season.

And it won't be long — a little more than a month or so — before the first flights of the early-migrating bluewings begin trickling into Texas on their way to wintering areas in Central and South America.

Teal that made the trip this past year are likely to find conditions much different when they get to Texas this autumn.

While wetland habitat conditions in the primary duck nesting areas of the northern prairies look much like they did a year ago, those in Texas — particularly the inland areas of east and northeast Texas — have changed drastically from this past summer.

"It's a different world out there this year," said Corey Mason, Athens-based Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wildlife biologist working with the agency's waterfowl programs, of wetlands in the bottomlands of eastern Texas. "The faucet finally got turned on, and we're going into this summer in great shape."

Drought memories

That certainly was not the case a year ago, when eastern Texas suffered under intense drought that evaporated most bottomland wetlands, shrank stock tanks and reservoirs to record lows and otherwise vaporized duck habitat.

"Last year, everything was just burned up." Mason said.

The poor habitat conditions resulted in the region wintering far fewer ducks than in most years. And even the few places that had decent habitat and attracted ducks generally didn't hold them for long. Heavy hunting pressure on those scattered wetlands quickly dispersed any concentrations of birds, Mason said.

But with the return of regular, often heavy rains over the past few months, waterfowl habitat has blossomed, he said.

"The oxbows are full, and we're seeing very good production (of waterfowl foods) in moist-soil areas," Mason said.

Heavy runoff pushed water into bottomlands which had been dry for more than a year and poured into reservoirs which had shrank to record or near-record levels. After a wet winter, spring and early summer, most reservoirs in northeast and east Texas are full — some are over-full.

Prospects are great for good production of premier waterfowl forage such as smartweed and millet, Mason said. And if the region can get occasional rains through August, waterfowl heading south this autumn should have plenty of reasons to stop.

"Things could change; who knows what'll happen in the next couple of months?" Mason said. "But, right now, we're set up in a lot better shape than we were in a year ago."

While the much improved habitat in east and northeast Texas stands to benefit waterfowl heading south this autumn, it already is proving a boon to ducks.

"Wood duck production (in east and northeast Texas) should be phenomenal this year," Mason said.

The same probably will be true for the resident mottled ducks along the Texas coast, thanks to much improved habitat in coastal marshes and prairies. But, right now, it's a little hard to gauge mottled duck nesting success.

"The vegetation is so dense, it's hard to see birds out there," said Matt Nelson, a Bay City-based state wildlife biologist who oversees Mad Island Wildlife Management Area.

That was not the situation a year ago when drought cooked the coastal marshes and prairies, withering vegetation with heat and lack of moisture or, closer to the coast, killing it outright by allowing saltwater to invade. Mottled duck production in 2006 was as poor as the habitat conditions.

"The situation is 180 degrees (different from) what it was last year," Nelson said this past week. "There's a lot of water on the landscape, and we've been getting just about the right amount of rain at just the right time."

The result has been a boom in wetland plants.

"Some of the ponds in the marsh are solid wigeongrass," Nelson said, noting the seed-producing submerged aquatic plant is "so thick on some ponds that mottled ducks can almost walk on top of it."

Wetter and wilder

While wigeongrass is thriving in brackish and intermediate marsh, sago pondweed, smartweeds and other premier waterfowl plants are going great guns in shallow freshwater ponds, managed impoundments and moist-soil units.

The only problem with this year's great growing conditions is that unwanted plants are doing just as well as the beneficial ones. Problem species such as phragmites and cattails are invading and overwhelming some wetlands.

But, overall, the improved habitat conditions triggered by the wet weather have been greatly beneficial to mottled ducks.

"There's some excellent brood habitat out there, now," Nelson said. "I suspect we're going to see some really good production from mottled ducks this year."

Despite the thick vegetation that makes it tough to see mottled ducks with their broods, biologists working in the marshes over the past few weeks have encountered several mother mottled ducks with their strings of ducklings.

And while at a Peach Point WMA near Freeport a couple of weeks ago, Nelson said, observers came across a hen blue-winged teal with a brood.

In some years when the Texas coast is particularly wet during spring, a few pairs of bluewings will forego the trip to the northern plains, nesting and raising young on the Texas coastal prairies.

This year, that looks to have been a smart decision.