FLOODS BOON TO WATERFOWL : BANNER YEAR SEEN FOR MANY SPECIES OF INSECT-EATING BIRDS.

Byline: Karyn Hunt Associated Press

For birds throughout the Western states, this winter's heavy rains and flooding are a dream come true. They'll mean less crowded winter conditions, full bellies in the spring and abundant breeding this summer.

``If you're a duck, the entire Central Valley is your oyster at this moment,'' said Craig Breon with the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society.

Waterfowl populations have decreased dramatically since the 1970s, hurt by years of drought and a century during which the Washington, Oregon and California wetlands where they winter have been dried up by dams, levees, farms and housing developments.

Annual bird counts in the Pacific Flyway from Canada to Mexico dropped from more than 4.5 million in the 1970s to 1.5 million in the mid- to late-1980s, according to Andrew Engilis, a biologist with Ducks Unlimited in Sacramento. They're back to nearly 4 million now and biologists hope they recover their numbers well beyond their level of two decades ago.

The problem is that the Central Valley was once like a bathtub, holding mountain snow runoff and water draining from the San Francisco Bay and San Joaquin Delta. In Oregon and Washington, the areas around the Willamette and Columbia rivers were similarly wet.

Millions of waterfowl migrating south for the winter from Canada and Alaska passed overhead and stopped for the night or spent the entire cold season on the lakes, ponds and swamps.

There, the cranes, swans, ducks and geese ate, formed mating pairs and got ready to nest in the spring and summer.

But over the century, the 4 million acres of wetlands have been dried up, cultivated or paved over and birds found themselves overcrowding fewer and smaller bodies of water. They competed for limited food supplies and disease epidemics like avian botulism and fowl cholera wiped out thousands at a time.

In recent years, awareness of those problems has grown and wetlands have been restored or created on private land. But nothing could help as much as a good flood.

``The timing of the floods was perfect for birds because they can find a lot of food and the flood waters actually helped them form their mating pairs,'' Engilis said.

``They'll be fat and sassy and ready to go back and lay clutches.''

For some bird species, the high water will hurt in the short term. Ground-loving sparrows and wrens, for example, are displaced. And the hummingbird mating season, which begins in January, was interrupted.

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Photo

Photo: An egret finds life just ducky as it soars above a recently flooded field north of Sacramento.

Associated Press