Syracuse.com - Frozen waterways in Western NY causing ducks to starve to death, Buffalo News reports

[HuntingNY-News]

They can't get at the aquatic vegetation through the ice.

The waterfowl being found dead or dying near Western New York's frozen lakes and rivers recently aren't sick and they didn't freeze to death, local bird experts say.

Nevertheless, the cold weather is reponsible for their demise, the Buffalo News reported

"They were starved," said Connie Adams, senior wildlife biologist at the Department of Environmental Conservation.

After getting several reports of ducks in distress since January, Adams was able to collect 83 birds from the ice in Dunkirk Harbor recently - just a sample of the hundreds there that had died - and had them examined by DEC pathologists.

Tom Bell, a wildlife biologist at the DEC's Region 7 office in Cortland, said he hasn't heard of any major incidents of birds starving to death or being found dead locally as a result of the cold.

He said there's been a few reports of dead ducks being found dead in the Oswego River/Harbor area by bird-watching enthusiasts, but nowhere else in this region.

Bell noted a large section of Cayuga Lake is still unfrozen and accessible to local ducks. A part of Onondaga Lake likewise remains unfrozen thanks to the warm water discharged from the Metropolitan Syracuse Waste Water Treatment Plant at the southern end of the lake.

Bell said the reason the ducks are starving in the western part of the state is that areas where they normally feed are still covered with ice. Those areas that aren't frozen over, he said, are too deep for the ducks to dive to get to the aquatic vegetation.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog