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Matt Fisher, our man on the ground in the Lower Cedar Valley, reports that there has been  a tremendous (and unusually large) abundance of ducks and geese this year.

It’s an orthinologist’s dream, he says.  He’s sighted, (and now cited)  snow geese (and other Light geese) and white fronted, Specklebelly geese as well as Canadas.  There are a bunch of fields in the area they have been utilizing but they’ve really been hitting the shallow wetlands that have been converted to farms.  Last summer we had a “ton of water” that had the same effect of attracting waterfowl and many of these fields flooded again this spring. 

“In the morning and evening on my commute,” Fisher says, “ I could see clouds of ducks and geese ascending into fields and, when spooked,  leaping into the sky.  I could see these from five miles away in places.  The variety of ducks has been incredible, too: diving ducks: canvasbacks, ringneck, scaup, bufflehead, goldeneyes, and mergansers as well as mallards, wood ducks and pintails, but also numerous others including widgeon, gadwalls and a smattering of teal.

Fisher swears he saw 5,000 mallards in a   running around like a bunch of chickens in a farm yard. “ Pretty neat to see so many birds.”

Which was raises a bigger point, Fisher notes that what’s good for the gander is also good for  the Iowan.

Wetlands provide natural  flood control which impacts the hundred thousand or so Iowans who live in the Cedar Basin.  These wetlands would be excellent candidates for restoration which would encourage birds to nest there (they only utilize them in the spring now).  Normally snow geese tend to bypass eastern Iowa, but “I think all this ‘sheet water’ and subsequent other ducks and geese made it attractive.  With restoration this could be a yearly event.”