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Spring ritual: Waterfowl on the move

PHOTOS BY GARRY BRANDENBURG —The spring season is right on time, as expected, even if the weather has been fickle about winter one day and warm spring-like weather the next. One thing not fickle about the spring season are bird migrations. The siren’s silent call for all kinds of birds to move northward is hard wired into their behavior. They must move north toward nesting territories, flying from wetland to wetland in stages, like stepping stones along a pathway home. Today’s image of the ltarge flock of white-fronts on ice at Hendrickson Marsh was made on March 14. Since then, the ice has melted, and open water greets even more ducks and geese of many species.

Spring has sprung. The inevitable date is a recognition of the position of our earth on its annual orbital pathway around the sun. It is nice to have a long cold winter behind us even though variable weather will remind us that winter weather will not give up easily.

We just know it will give up as spring gains momentum. March 20 has a day length of 12 hours and seven minutes for us folks at 42 degrees north latitude. We are gaining about three minutes more daylight every day.

White-fronted geese are just one harbinger of spring’s arrival. After a winter spent along the Gulf of Mexico coastline and in wetlands and crop fields of rice in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi, stable populations of white-fronts, also known as specks or specklebellies due to the blotchy color patterns of feathers on their chest, are moving north.

White-fronts are adaptable to changes in agricultural land use patterns, availing themselves to rice fields, corn or soybeans, even milo. GPS tracking devices have allowed researchers to follow individual geese all across the continent. One thing learned from ground track courses is that white-fronts sometimes go on exploratory trips east or west from a wintering area. At this time of the year, geese are following the snow line north as spring melts back the white stuff.

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The Iowa River Valley chapter of Ducks Unlimited is hosting a fundraising banquet soon for local central Iowa enthusiasts of all things waterfowl. The date will be April 2, a Saturday evening, at the Best Western conference center in Marshalltown at Highway 14 and Iowa Avenue.

Doors open at 5 p.m. for socializing and games, and later that evening, silent and live auction will be held. However, before the auctions begin, Smokin’ G’s will be serving a fantastic meal to all in attendance.

Among the many sporting related waterfowl items, will be many long guns, shotguns specifically, to help strike the fancy of the hunters in the audience. There will be many other great gift ideas on the auction block. Funds raised at this DU banquet will be used toward projects that are wetland related.

Ticket sale information can be obtained by calling 641-740-7772. This scribe urges all persons who use and enjoy wetlands to consider attending, whether you are a hunter or not, since wetland conservation depends on habitat, habitat management and long term waterfowl research programs to learn more about our avian resources.

Ducks Unlimited has become the world’s largest and most effective private, nonprofit wetlands and waterfowl conservation organization. This year marks the 85th year for DU to embark upon habitat programs and projects.

One way they do this is to work through a series of partnerships with private individuals, landowners, agencies, scientific communities and businesses. Funds raised in fiscal year 2021 nationally had revenues of $340 million that came from 52,000 volunteers at 4,500 in-person fundraising events with 400,000 people attending.

DU likes to call their work on the ground as “mud, money and members,” and one last note of great importance: money raised by DU is primarily spent on-the-ground projects and programs that have benefits to the tune of 83 percent. Three percent covers overhead and needed administrative management, and the remaining 14 percent is used for fundraising and development.

DU Inc. is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving wetland habitat for waterfowl and other wildlife. DU had humble beginnings on Jan. 29, 1937. Membership cost is a minimum of $35 annually, and of course there are higher levels of membership if one so desires. The DU magazine is sent to over 75,000 subscribers.

Wetland complexes all over the nation just do not happen. It takes work. It takes teamwork. It takes money. It requires input from many stakeholders working together with scientists to make and improve habitats of many varieties.

As a wildlife photographer, any vacation journey to surrounding states involves my consultation with maps. I want to locate national, state or local wildlife refuges/management sites or project lands. I make it a point to spend time at these places, camera and binoculars at the ready. Information I gather while at these forests, wetlands or marshes is gleaned for details of why that particular area was developed for wildlife, and I learn how each area provides a framework for offering waterfowl and all other wildlife safe feeding, resting and brooding sites. Local DU chapters almost always have a hand in these projects and financial contributions. Thank you DU for your partnership.

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Occasional wildlife visitors to Iowa are my next notes for you to contemplate in a brief exploration into Iowa’s native natural history. In his book “A Country So Full of Game — A Story of Wildlife in Iowa” by James J. Dinsmore, an Iowa State University professor, he documents local stories from long ago newspaper stories and county records.

His list of animals once more common than now included the history of bison, elk, deer, wild cats, black bears, wolves and coyotes, foxes, furbearers, passenger pigeons, prairie chickens, wild turkeys, quail, ruffed grouse, shorebirds and waterfowl. This book is an excellent look back in time to what once was and how settlement changed the landscape to such a degree that many of these species of wildlife were extirpated.

I’m going to make a few notes of just three of these for our review: black bear, wolves and mountain lions. Starting with black bears, several surrounding states have breeding populations, small as they are, in Wisconsin, southern Missouri, Minnesota and South Dakota. As settlers moved west across Iowa in the mid 1800s, encounters with black bears usually ended with the bear’s death.

Bears were widely distributed, however, and more tended to be found in large woodland settings. Pre-1900 records come from 48 counties with two-thirds of those from the eastern half of Iowa. The last recorded historical bear sighting in the 1800s was one killed near Spirit Lake in 1876. Bears are not recognized as a designated wildlife species in the Iowa Code.

In the 1960s, a few black bear sightings were happening, but they were random and rare. In the 1990s, field reports of wild free ranging black bears trickled in from time to time. Still a rarity, these sightings were validated.

Northeast Iowa predominates over time for bears. A Wisconsin black bear was tracked in eastern Iowa in 2009 as it paralleled the Mississippi River before crossing the river to return to Wisconsin. In 2010, 2011 and 2012, one bear in each year was spotted in northeast Iowa. None happened in 2013. There were three confirmed bear sightings in 2014, two of which were in northeast Iowa and one in Ringgold County. Black Bears, like mountain lions/cougars, have no legal status in Iowa.

Mountain lions/cougars always garner headlines if and when they are confirmed. In the fall of 2004, a mountain lion walked past the trail camera owned by Roger Kaput. His camera was just there to monitor deer and turkey. Imagine his surprise when the back two-thirds of the cougar was captured by the film camera. It was proof that the lion had passed that location. In November 2004, I authored a fact filled story for Outdoors Today published in the Times-Republican that talked about mountain lions and the likely host site for dispersal being the Black Hills of South Dakota.

In general, one or two sightings of cougars are confirmed each year. In 1995, there was one. Next was 2001 with five. None in 2002 and two in 2003, then five in 2004. There were none between 2005 and 2008. One sighting happened in 2009, none in 2010, one in 2011 and 2012 and just two in 2013.

I do not have the data from 2014 until now. Basically, similar ones and twos were likely. A reminder is in order again,.and here it is: anyone who says they heard that the Iowa DNR has stocked cougars in this state by black helicopters at night is flat out wrong, misinformed, gullible and guilty of smoking their sweaty socks. Dumb and dumber fits this scenario.

Now on to wolves and facts. Northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin have populations of wolves. The southern edge of the breeding area for Minnesota wolves is 175 miles north of the Iowa border. The southern edge of Wisconsin’s wolf range is just 50 miles from Iowa.

The Mississippi River and its tributaries provide a natural travel corridor. Wolves are much larger than coyotes, yet at a distance, without critical optics to make a clear identification, coyote versus wolf may be misidentified. Wolves are a protected species in Iowa, and they were greatly persecuted by pioneers from the mid 1800s until none could be found. Records show a wolf killed in Madison County in 1862, in Sac County in 1868, and Butler County during the winter of 1884-85.

Do obtain a copy of Dinsmore’s book to learn more about Iowa’s occasional wildlife big predator animals. Each chapter is well done and fact filled.

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Garry Brandenburg is the retired director of the Marshall County Conservation Board. He is a graduate of Iowa State University with a BS degree in Fish & Wildlife Biology.

Contact him at:

P.O. Box 96

Albion, IA 50005

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