Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vo. 295
The snow has not stopped so I guess that winter is finally here. I know that I have moved snow from the driveway six out of the last seven days and it looks like more is coming tonight. Not the two to three feet that they had in the Tug Hill area. Along with the snow came the winds and when it was not snowing the wind kept blowing. I know I looked like a snowman every time I had to blow out the driveway. It has just enough turns in the nine hundred fifty feet that somewhere from here to the road the wind blows the snow right back at me. It must have been really bad up in the open farm country around Lowville and Watertown. I know there was no unnecessary travel in that area for several days and schools were closed. A Ranger School classmate Paul Bozard who lives out in the Buffalo area said he had been getting some of the snow bands off Lake Erie and e-mailed me an old saying “As the days grow longer, the cold grows stronger.” Thanks Paul and we are finally having winter. He should be getting less lake effect snow as Lake Erie is frozen over, but Lake Ontario is not.
The folks down in the Gulf states who do not normally get snow, got it last week and that can be crippling there as they do not have any way to plow it from the highways. Temperatures stayed below freezing there for a few days, so it did not melt. My daughter who lives in the middle of Florida for the winter said it was thirty-two there, but they did not get any snow. The orange crop must be hurting so you can see the price of them going up along with the eggs.
Out west they got some rain on the fires but that caused mudslides in the areas burned as there was no vegetation to soak up the rain that fell. The Forest Rangers team from New York went west last week to help with the fires there. The winds went down and along with the rain they got some control over those fires. 16,200 structures have been damaged or destroyed in the Palisades and Eaton fires. Twenty-eight people have lost their lives in the fires. Four fires are still burning in southern California, totaling over 47,000 acres. Two of these fires are over 90% contained, the Palisades Fire, the largest of the four at least 23,000 acres, is only 77% contained.
The New York State Waterfowl Count was held in region seven on January 18 and 19 with fifteen volunteers in ten parties who watched for a total of 33.25 hours in the counties of Essex, Franklin, Clinton, and Hamilton. Ellie George and Stacy Robinson were compilers plus observers for the count. In Ellie’s write up for the count she said the water on Lake Champlain was open from the Champlain Bridge on the south to Cumberland Head on the north. A new record for the number of waterfowl counted this year was 26,886 birds, 10,000 more than 2024, a record high then of 16,138. Record numbers of Scaup which came down from Canada were 7,000 more than last year. New records may also have been set for Common Goldeneye and Common Merganser. Rarities found were Barrow’s Goldeneye, Northern Wigeon, Northern Pintail and Tufted Duck. Totals by Species: Snow Geese-2, Canada Geese- 793, American Wigeon-1, American Black Duck-133, Mallard-1,947, Mallard-Black-3, Northern Pintail- 2, Canvasback- 4 Redhead-6, Ringed-necked Duck- 82, Tufted Duck- 1, Greater Scaup- 4,317, Lesser Scaup- 337, Not to Species Scaup- 12,118, Bufflehead- 115, Common Goldeneye- 4,890, Barrow’s Goldeneye-2, Hooded Merganser- 40, Common Merganser- 2047, Red Breasted Merganser- 14, Common Loon-6 and Horned Grebe- 14 for the total of 26,886 waterfowl.
That is a lot of waterfowl who mostly eat fish, fishing mostly in Lake Champlain. Sport anglers blame the Double Crested Cormorants which nest on the lake in the summertime for some of the poor fishing, but they leave for the winter. If the water remains open these ducks will spend the entire winter fishing in the open water. The perch anglers are most impacted because these fish hang out in shallower water than other game fish making them most susceptible to these waterfowl diving ducks. In the DEC list of fish that ice fishing anglers go after the most, perch were not even listed, and I think they are sought more than any of the fish listed. Maybe it was just an oversight as anyone can catch a perch.
Be prepared if you go out for a x-country ski or snowshoe hike but that’s another story. See ya.
Photo above: Scaup ducks by Ellie George
