Dead Ducks

[greg54]

Just watched on news that there are large number of ducks that have died along Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The DEC calls it extensive. The ducks have died due to starvation, not able to reach their food due to the ice cover this extremely cold winter. There will probably be more news on this. I just watched it today at noon.

[Pygmy]

Hard  to believe....Why didn't they just fly  farther south  ?

[greg54]

Here is link www.wivb/.../03/hundreds-of-ducks-found-dead-around-lake

[greg54]

Hard  to believe....Why didn't they just fly  farther south  ?

That is just what I thought. They said cause of ice cover but that's first I ever heard of something like this.

[greg54]

This should be correct one www.wivb/.../03/hundreds-of-ducks-found-dead-around-lakes

[Doc]

That is just what I thought. They said cause of ice cover but that's first I ever heard of something like this.

But this is not the first time that Erie has frozen over, and Ontario isn't frozen over yet. So why all of a sudden?

[greg54]

But this is not the first time that Erie has frozen over, and Ontario isn't frozen over yet. So why all of a sudden?

I don't know Doc. I just watched the story on WIVB-TV CH 4 at noon today. The stories on their website.

[Five Seasons]

That's sad. Mother Nature can be a real bitch.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Larry]

^{Hey guys the dead ducks  probably didn't starve to death it was more likely avian botulism its has happen before around both lakes in the winter. They will do testing to find out for sure.}

[Doc]

I just read a headline in the Rochester paper that claims that 90% of the Great Lakes are frozen. I had no idea as to the extent of the ice. Who knows, maybe there is some starvation going on. They said something about the amount of Great Lakes frozen water is the greatest in 20 some years. They had some other neat stats about records and other features of the freezing. 

[mike rossi]

But this is not the first time that Erie has frozen over, and Ontario isn't frozen over yet. So why all of a sudden?

 

From what I read, it is indeed starvation and most of the birds are not ducks, and are non game and fish eaters.

 

One of the birds is the scaup, which is a game species and has been the subject of a lot of research. The 20 year decline in scaup populations has been blamed on lower spring time body weights than the historical average. The cause of the poor body condition has a number of theories. A bird like the scaup, which will eat both plant and animal diets should have a survival advantage, yet this is one of the species found dead of starvation. It might be that the other birds which starved are having the same issues as scaup. Obviously poor body condition would enable starvation during a hard winter such as this year. Since game species are better monitored and research is better funded, game species often become indicator species for non game or ecology in general. This is a good example of how hunting benefits non-game.

 

I want to correct a few things quoted in the news articles. Notice I said "quoted", as I suspect the newspaper erred, not the DEC.  

 

 The scaup is not an obligate fish-eater, they eat 50% plant and 50% animal, mostly mollusks, not small fish. In the winter, ducks that eat both plants and animals, actually eat more plants.

 

The scaup does not have a "small bill", as a matter of fact hunters refer to them as "broad bills". There is thought to be a relationship between bill size/shape and diet, but this concept was not reported correctly.

 

A few people in the comments section, including wildlife rehabilitators, have stated that scaup will not eat corn if people feed it to them. Not true, they wont come up to people like mallards, but they will eat corn, as a matter of fact biologists use corn as bait when they band them. I am not suggesting people feed the scaup and I never heard of that being prescribed. However the issue about feeding waterfowl was raised and as usual there was a lot of misinformation generated.

 

One of the gems from the camo community be belong to just had to say how he hoped the cormorants would starve as well and how they impact the fisheries. I admit I am not well-informed about cormorants; but I do know that it is actually the fish which are impacting waterbirds in general because they compete for invertebrates and are encroaching into wetlands more frequently. Do these jokers ever stop and think what do they hope to gain by throwing gasoline on an enemy that is more numerous, better informed, and better armed (or rather brained) then us? A lot of legitimate reasons to stand up and bow can be attributed to scaup research supported by waterfowl hunters, because the scaup my be an indictor for all the other species, why wander off into non-relevance and controversy?

Edited March 7, 2014 by mike rossi