Mississippi Flyway

And I will say that the highlight of in terms of, you know, we are seeing drought in some areas.

I mean, the Mississippi Flyway, a lot of it looks really good compared to what we've seen last year's 2020 to 2023.

Kind of that time period was terrible for drought widespread.

So we have improved in those areas.

So the Mississippi Flyway, you know, you're you got a lot of water unless you're in Arkansas.

That's a dry area.

But yeah, water is going to be a little bit harder to come by, which a lot of times with that in those areas, that just means more, more ducks are going to be compressed into less area, which means those opportunities where you do find the water, you could find greater success.

And it's funny, there's been some slight shifts in season.

There are, these are Mississippi Flyway seasons and limits, so, um, went from 40 du- 40 days to 50, 50, 45.

And you're seeing some slight changes in, in harvest opportunity, but everything follows the ponds.

So in '75, we had 7.7 million mallards, 5.3 million ponds, went to 7.9 million mallards in '76.

So okay, well, do we need to look at something else? And so they have a multi-stock analysis that looks at, I think, wood ducks and ringnecks and black ducks and other suites of things.

And I think the Flyways are starting to look at that as well.

I know the Mississippi Flyway's, um, moving forward with trying to make sure that adaptive harvest management now is reflective of what's on the landscape.

I wanna, I wanna jump in here 'cause we've got a couple of questions.

As it does every September, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri is turning off its lights at night to keep our fine feathered friends from getting sidetracked as they head south for the winter.

According to the National Park Service, the arch sits smack dab in the middle of one of the nation's busiest bird highways, the Mississippi Flyway.

Many of the avian aviators travel at night, so the lights can be disorienting, sending them in the wrong direction, or sometimes even into the sides of buildings.

Come October, once most of the birds have safely winged their way back to warmer destinations, the arch will light back up before bowing to nature again in May for their long return trip home.

What does that mean?

Central and Mississippi Flyway.

Because they have another survey that came out from the East Flyway, like the Atlantic Flyway.

This is pertaining pretty much OSR ducks.

Okay, all right, but for the rest of the Central Flyway, it's like 74 and 6.

For the Mississippi Flyway, it's 60 and 6.

So if we go to a moderate package, then you guys would go to 60 and 6.

In the Mississippi Flyway, it would go to 45 days and 6 ducks.

So the bag limit wouldn't change.

It would just be the season length that would change.

And I'm Brandon, he, him.

So far this month, we've talked with two of our colleagues at Three Rivers, Adrian and Michelle, as well as Dr. Wayne Thogmartin about his research on hunters and sportsmen within the Mississippi Flyway.

Today, we are joined by John Lindstrom from Ducks Unlimited.

Welcome, John.

Migration is also very dangerous.

The top killer of songbirds is domestic cats, followed by window strikes, so remember to keep your cats indoors and consider getting decals or strings for your windows to make them more visible for migrating birds.

Don't forget, you can learn more about the Mississippi Flyway by visiting our social media pages, the Wandering Naturalist podcast of Three Rivers Park District, and typing in our series title, Life is a Flyway, into the search bar.

Oh, sure.