Row crop agriculture-corn and soybeans, especially-has continued to increase in that country, providing more food for the birds. The refuge is on the north end of Cayuga Lake, which is large and deep and stays ice-free all winter. That provides roosting water.

The cropped fields are often blown free of snow in winter, too, exposing waste grains, so you've got all the elements geese and mallards need to stay there until the weather gets too severe. When it does, they'll move farther down the flyway, but only as far as temperatures and food supplies dictate."

Habitat restoration is another reason ducks find Montezuma NWR increasingly attractive. Tom Jasikoff, the refuge manager, says, "Over the last 10 years, we've been trying to restore 50,000 acres of the historic Montezuma marsh complex. This is one of the priority projects of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan. We've been purchasing land, putting in dikes, managing water levels, engaging in some cooperative farming to provide additional food, and generally doing what we can to make the habitat favorable for ducks.

For instance, we've conducted major work to control the proliferation of purple loosestrife and cattail in an attempt to improve the ratio of emergent vegetation to water, and to return to native marsh vegetation that ducks prefer for brood-rearing habitat."

According to Jasikoff, the ducks have responded to the improved habitat, and waterfowl visitation has increased accordingly. Waterfowl hunting success has also increased, largely due to warm fall weather and larger fall flights. "Hunting is available on some parts of the federal refuge," he says, "as well as on some surrounding state lands. On the refuge portion, the number of ducks harvested per hunter visit has increased from a range of 1 to about 2.5 in previous years to 3.1 last season. Last season was a banner year."

Fall flights in the Mississippi Flyway have always frustrated duck hunters, but even more so in recent years. With vastly improved annual duck production during the last half of the 1990s and a return of 60-day duck seasons, hunters in the northern tier of Mississippi Flyway states have been particularly stymied. Duck seasons in those states start in early October, when most migrant ducks are still lingering on the Canadian prairies.

Diving ducks may or may not arrive on schedule during late October, but freeze-up often occurs in these northern states well before a 60-day season ends. By then, the majority of the fall flight of migrants, especially mallards, might still remain on the prairies or, if not, may overfly those states or only stage there for a short while, providing limited hunting opportunities.

Many of these mallards' next migratory wayside, at least in recent years, has been central Missouri. For more than a decade, Missouri has pursued a huge wetland acquisition and development program, providing migratory stopover areas for waterfowl. Some of those wetlands are moist soil management parcels that include food plantings such as corn. Given good water conditions on these wetlands and plenty of food, mallards are particularly reluctant to move farther south until cold weather mandates their eviction.

"Given a mild winter," says Tom Moorman, director of conservation planning for DU's Southern Regional Office, "mallards, in particular, adjust their strategy, for lack of a better word, to hang on at the edge of winter, near the ice line. Unlike teal, gadwall, and other dabblers, they'll stay as far north as possible. And with improved habitat available in Missouri, the birds will stay there as long as they can hold out."

Farther south in the Mississippi Flyway, weather can also wreak havoc on hunter expectations. "Dry years are especially bad for hunters on many public areas in the South that depend on precipitation to flood them," Moorman says. "This last year, for example, when it finally got cold up north, the South was dry. When that happens, and it has happened more than once in recent years, mallards overfly Arkansas and Mississippi and go all the way on to the Gulf Coast, primarily to southwest Louisiana.