Are some ducks species faithful to the same wintering areas year after year and generation after generation?
It is the rule that migratory birds go to traditional areas to spend the winter. That also applies to most ducks. There are a few ducks, especially mallards, that stay as far north as they can until freezing weather and a lack of food push them to migrate south. That, however, is more the exception rather than the rule. We often have ducks showing up in Louisiana in August and September, long before northern weather would move birds. In the past 25 years we have learned that some of the bay and sea ducks show remarkable homing to the exact same sites to spend the winter. That may also occur with dabbling ducks, but researchers just have not examined how precisely individual ducks return to wintering sites. Scaup, canvasbacks and other diving ducks winter in the Gulf’s coastal bays where the current risk of oiling is most serious. Can we shortstop divers? This is very unlikely. From what I’ve read, the incentives programs are all about flooding grain fields, especially rice and other sh
