SW minn flooding

F

Flushedup

Active member
Not great for chick production, but I'm driving down Hwy 23 right now and holy smokes the rivers, drainage ditches, low areas of fields are incredibly full of water.
 
Mid-June has been a bit on the cool and wet side. Not a great start as the nests start hatching.
 
It's been a very active weather pattern this past week and another active day today. I've received 3 inches cumulative since last Wednesday.

I'd be fine if it dried out for a few days...
 
Weimdogman said:
Heard Lake Lillian had 10"s of rain. Lot of rain in the nw corner of S.Dak and some drains to Minnesota.
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Yes the area I was generally referring to was Willmar to Granite Falls. The crop insurance guys will be busy. There was water spurting up like a fountain out of field tile spots, Unreal what the man made ditches looked like. Further down by Marshall looked better
 
The bulk of SW MN did not get anywhere near as much rain as the Willmar area did. South of the MN River, the most I've seen cumulatively is in the 2-3 inch range over the last week. It was above 50 degrees overnight all but maybe one night--so cooler, but not that cold, and wet, but not terrible. Just enough rain to keep the hay jockeys and recreational mowers from hammering the road ditches. Looks like we'll have another 3-4 day span of rain next week, but with overnight temps above 60.

SW MN overwintered a ton of birds. There are chicks on the ground. It's shaping up to be the best year in a long, long time. And for what it's worth, the best hunting last fall was in the areas that got 15+ inches of rain in late June.
 
Little worried about flooding this week in southern MN. Up to 4 inches of rain may fall between now and Friday morning. Not a great time to get it right after the hatch.
 
gim said:
Little worried about flooding this week in southern MN. Up to 4 inches of rain may fall between now and Friday morning. Not a great time to get it right after the hatch.
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I think yesterday was the day that many parts of Southern Minnesota got 4 to 7 inches of rain in a day in 2024.
 
Drove through the local grassland complex this morning and saw 5 pheasant broods, 3 of which contained flyers (3-4 week old chicks). It was hard to get good counts since the shoulders and ditches haven't been mowed yet, but the first brood had at least 10. That's a good indicator that the hen was successful with her first nesting attempt, and few (if any) of her chicks have died since then. It was very encouraging.

For the month of June, I'm at 2.36" total inches of rain (according to the nearest station), which is perfectly normal for the month--maybe even below average. As I mentioned earlier, the heavy rain was not evenly distributed across the pheasant range. The current weather front produced half as much rain as was forecasted. It's been warm enough that thermoregulation shouldn't be too challenging for the little ones, even with the moisture.
 
:cry:

Could be worse I suppose it is not really, really cold.

Hens in areas where there is not a lot of grasslands tend to nest in low lying areas that can be prone to flooding.

The hope is the early spring did in fact trigger a few hens to start a bit early - sounds like nater is seeing that.

Hens losing their nests will renest, but each renest effort typically has a few less eggs.

It is widely understood that a hen with a brood will not renest if the brood is lost. I get that - sometimes you see a hen with a brood of just a few chicks. But if a hen loses her entire brood early ... how does one (or a biologist) know if she is a solo hen that lost her nest or lost her entire brood ?
 
nater said:
Drove through the local grassland complex this morning and saw 5 pheasant broods, 3 of which contained flyers (3-4 week old chicks). It was hard to get good counts since the shoulders and ditches haven't been mowed yet, but the first brood had at least 10. That's a good indicator that the hen was successful with her first nesting attempt, and few (if any) of her chicks have died since then. It was very encouraging.

For the month of June, I'm at 2.36" total inches of rain (according to the nearest station), which is perfectly normal for the month--maybe even below average. As I mentioned earlier, the heavy rain was not evenly distributed across the pheasant range. The current weather front produced half as much rain as was forecasted. It's been warm enough that thermoregulation shouldn't be too challenging for the little ones, even with the moisture.
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Thanks for the report, @nater ! Much appreciated. The area in SW MN where we hunt got around 2.5 inches in the last couple of days...a bit cool overnight a couple of these nights, but I am very hopeful for the season!
 
I got 3.5 inches Wed/Thursday. Most of that came on Wed. I was in the flash flood zone too, but that area appeared to be isolated to the Twin Cities region.

More rain forecasted tonight, and more on Saturday night. These ones will be more isolated in nature. We need a week of dry weather though.
 
Anyone have any reports from the storms that swept through SW Minnesota last night? Appears like the Canby area got hit hard. Also looks like the storms created some serious tornadoes in eastern South Dakota as well.
 
With all of this rain, and if chicks are 2-3 weeks old now, how would that rain affect them? Just yesterday I had a friend tell me that when he was cutting some hay the other day, he flushed two broods of pheasants, and the first had 11-12 chicks, and he guessed they were 2-3 weeks old, so that is really encouraging. Hopefully chicks everywhere can make it through all this rain - I just don't know if it affects them or not, so I thought I would check to see if anyone might know.
 
MNhunter4ever said:
With all of this rain, and if chicks are 2-3 weeks old now, how would that rain affect them? Just yesterday I had a friend tell me that when he was cutting some hay the other day, he flushed two broods of pheasants, and the first had 11-12 chicks, and he guessed they were 2-3 weeks old, so that is really encouraging. Hopefully chicks everywhere can make it through all this rain - I just don't know if it affects them or not, so I thought I would check to see if anyone might know.
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Lots of variables, but a few things to consider. Median hatch date for MN tends to fall between June 10 and June 15 (depending on the year). Chicks start to fly at 2 weeks, and are decent flyers at 3 weeks. At that age, they can also thermoregulate fairly well. So by now, more than half of the broods can sustain some wet and (relative) cold, and flee mammalian predators through flight. Those chicks are mostly out of the woods, so to speak.

The early hatched broods also tend to be significantly larger in size since they represent the first or second nesting attempts. So while only half of the broods might have hatched before June 15, those broods contain significantly more than half of the overall chicks that will be produced this year since there were more eggs in the nest than those yet to hatch (or hatched in the last 1-2 weeks). My personal observation from last year suggested that the heavy late-June rains came at a time when the early hatchers were already past the danger zone in terms of development, so as long as there was some relatively dry habitat in the area (at the site-level scale), there were plenty of hatch year birds to be found.

Back to this year--chicks that hatched near or after June 15 (mostly from re-nests) have likely had a rough go. The June 13-14 rains came at a bad time, especially in that area north of the MN river that got 8-10 inches. At the same time, pheasant chicks spend more than half of the day when they're young being brooded/huddled over by mom. They're not out there just shivering in the rain by themselves. Intermittent wet/cold exposure can also build some tolerance, as opposed to say, one extended period of wet/cold conditions. The rain events by me have been a little all over the place, but it's not like we've had 2-3 days straight of 24 hour rains like we did last year around this time.

So who knows. I'm still optimistic. I've been in MN for 11 springs now, and there were more overwintering birds this year than any other since I've been here. There were roosters claiming every last acre of marginal grass they could find in April/May, which means the hens were also there in large numbers. So that helps too. The rain has kept farmers and roadside authorities out of the ditches and hayfields, so that's also a plus this time of year for nests in those marginal habitats. The extended forecast is mostly favorable--looks like the next rain event will be around the 4th, but most of this week until then will be warm and clear.

We'll know a lot more in two months when the Roadside Survey comes out!
 
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nater said:
Lots of variables, but a few things to consider. Median hatch date for MN tends to fall between June 10 and June 15 (depending on the year). Chicks start to fly at 2 weeks, and are decent flyers at 3 weeks. At that age, they can also thermoregulate fairly well. So by now, more than half of the broods can sustain some wet and (relative) cold, and flee mammalian predators through flight. Those chicks are mostly out of the woods, so to speak.

The early hatched broods also tend to be significantly larger in size since they represent the first or second nesting attempts. So while only half of the broods might have hatched before June 15, those broods contain significantly more than half of the overall chicks that will be produced this year since there were more eggs in the nest than those yet to hatch (or hatched in the last 1-2 weeks). My personal observation from last year suggested that the heavy late-June rains came at a time when the early hatchers were already past the danger zone in terms of development, so as long as there was some relatively dry habitat in the area (at the site-level scale), there were plenty of hatch year birds to be found.

Back to this year--chicks that hatched after June 15 (mostly from re-nests) have likely had a rough go. The June 13-14 rains came at a bad time, especially in that area north of the MN river that got 8-10 inches. At the same time, pheasant chicks spend more than half of the day when they're young being brooded/huddled over by mom. They're not out there just shivering in the rain by themselves. Intermittent wet/cold exposure can also build some tolerance, as opposed to say, one extended period of wet/cold conditions. The rain events by me have been a little all over the place, but it's not like we've had 2-3 days straight of 24 hour rains like we did last year around this time.

So who knows. I'm still optimistic. I've been in MN for 11 springs now, and there were more overwintering birds this year than any other since I've been here. There were roosters claiming every last acre of marginal grass they could find in April/May, which means the hens were also there in large numbers. So that helps too. The rain has kept farmers and roadside authorities out of the ditches and hayfields, so that's also a plus this time of year for nests in those marginal habitats. The extended forecast is mostly favorable--looks like the next rain event will be around the 4th, but most of this week until then will be warm and clear.

We'll know a lot more in two months when the Roadside Survey comes out!
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That was very informative to read! Thanks @nater !
 
I generally agree with nater's assessment.

Use last year as an example here. Areas that received massive flooding had lower road side counts; whereas areas that received rain but NOT floods had greatly increased road side counts. Rain is good - it creates moisture and lush habitat and a surplus of bugs for birds to eat and grow quickly.

But a monsoon at the wrong time has devastating effects, and its very possible (if not likely) that this occurred in some localized areas mentioned above.

I can say with relative positivity that in nearly 25 years of hunting here in MN that wetter springs often produce more birds than ones that are riddled with severe drought.

The one aspect that I can concretely agree with is that mortality among adult pheasants the past two winters has been nearly nonexistent. When I was turkey hunting this spring, there were a lot of adults around. These fake winters are certainly reducing the amount of birds that succumb in the winter months.
 
Moisture on the grass during brood counts drives them to the roads to dry off.

Severe drought results in less insects. Small chicks need protein.
 
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