Mayberry 2012

(Note: For those who are not familiar with Mayberry, that’s what we call our Sherman Island duck club. We owned it for years and sold it to the State (under threat of condemnation) in the ’90s. Since that time we’ve been in a lease agreement with management of the property our responsibility – until about four years ago. That’s when California decided to put a new program into place. We still have a hunting lease, but do not manage the property. This update may interest those who have followed my duck hunting and property management stories on this blog.)

The Mayberry transformation is complete. There is no longer any habitat that is prime for dabbling ducks and wading birds. The property has been changed from a shallow-water seasonal wetland to a deep-water marsh inhabited by tules (hardstem bulrush) and cattail, but very little wildlife. Yes there are a few river otters, fish and blackbirds, but a census of wildlife would show a fraction of  the inhabitants from just a few years ago. To be fair, it is  a fact that the bulk of migrating waterfowl have not reached the area yet, so things will get better.

I’m on the outside looking in, but the way I understand it, the primary purpose of the ongoing project at Mayberry is two fold – study the subsidence of delta islands and also evaluate carbon sequestration associated with the dense stands of tules and cattail. It is hoped that covering the land with water will stop the sinking of the islands by reducing oxidation of the highly organic soils. And, that a study of tules and cattail will provide insight into ways to improve air quality and reduce global warming trends.

These are lofty goals, but the losses associated with this study are by far more clear, to me, than the gains.

Mayberry looks like a lake.

During  my last three trips to Mayberry, I’ve not spotted a duck on the ponds, not even a coot. The closest I’ve seen to a duck has been a cormorant that landed on the water. The good news, I can take my fishing rod out with me on opening day of duck season.

There is still hope for some waterfowl activity, but it’s sketchy. I’ve been told that there are a couple pair of honkers using the property and the shallow seasonal ponds next door hold quite a few ducks that could possibly flyover Mayberry. Maybe ducks will begin to use the property as the waterfowl migration arrives, but there is very little food for them.

Here’s a photo of a shallow pond next door. This is what we used to see at Mayberry before the ponds were converted to permanent water.

The sad part of the story is that 300 acres of great duck and shorebird habitat has been destroyed. It’s too bad that at least some of the property wasn’t left as seasonal marsh. It would have been a nice compromise and it would have allowed for more use by migratory waterfowl – both game and non-game. Or better yet, they could have left the seasonal marsh in place and converted 300 acres of cow pasture to marsh. I guess the pasture was too valuable.

Thousands of waterfowl formerly used Mayberry as a significant winter feeding area.

The bottom line is that management of the property in is the control of others and I have been blessed with great opportunity to hunt there for many years, so no matter what happens, I will always be thankful that my partners and I have had such incredible good fortune.

The good old days with shallow marsh and seasonl wetland habitat.

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Mayberry, March 2011

 

White front geese greeted me on the way to Mayberry. I recall seeing them at this same small pond during March of previous years – one of their last hangouts before they head north. (Click to enlarge photo.)

White-front geese near Antioch Bridge.

Another common site on the way to Mayberry in late winter is goats grazing on the levees. This levee maintainance is a necessary evil.

Levee goats 3-14-11.

Maybe the goats are early enough that the cover can recoup in time for pheasant nesting season. The levee is the only part of the property that has suitable cover for nesting.

Here's something new at Mayberry, Canada geese. Maybe they'll hang around to nest, if they can find a bush to hide behind.

 The weather was not good for photography, so I drove around the levees hoping to find something encouraging. A kildeer posed for me.

Kildeer are something else that's new.

I imagine we’ll have kildeer for a year or two, until the habitat matures. Then they look for another site with no cover.

A look at the neighboring pasture, brought back memories of the days when we had seasonal marsh.

A look at the Mayberry ponds was discouraging.

Mayberry’s ponds held a few ducks in the remaining shallow spots, but most of the ponds were deep and void of waterfowl use.

A flock of snows passed by and then a larger flock of white-fronts lifted off to the west and passed overhead.

These geese made a lot of noise.

The specs came by even closer.

White-front geese at Sherman Island

Waterfowl was evident all around, but mostly not using Mayberry.

A few sprig were using the shallowest portion of the ponds. As the skies lightened, I got a pretty good photo of one passing by.

Pintail drake over Mayberry.

Light conditions were very poor for photography of birds in flight, but the sun did come out to illuminate this pintail.

A few attempts to photograph the goldeneyes of Mayberry slough resulted in one pretty good shot.

The goldeneye live on the slough, but seldom travel over the ponds.

It’s almost time for the goldeneye to depart northward. They’ll be back again next Thanksgiving.

Cliff swallows are ever present at Mayberry.

Cliff swallows are tough to photograph in flight.

Antioch Bridge view from Mayberry.

I suppose the swallows make their nests on the bridge.

Along the Sacramento River bank, I photographed this snowy egret. He showed well on a gray day.

Snowy egret hunting.

He lifted off and the photo in flight came out pretty well too.

Things will improve at Mayberry as the habitat matures. It’s interesting to see how wildlife use changes with the habitat.

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Webb Tract Geese in Fog

On the way to our duck club, we passed a pond covered with geese. They stood staring at the vehicle from about 100 yards. I used my camera to take a brief video which can be watched on youtube by clicking the link below. It’s impressive to see how many geese were stacked in the pond.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCxHt1NNgTchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCxHt1NNgTchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCxHt1NNgTc

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Flooding Up at Mayberry 2009

The ten- inch siphon is running with three weeks to go until duck season. It takes a while to flood up about 150 acres of ducks ponds with a ten inch siphon pipe, maybe as much as two weeks. After a while, we may have to start up our second siphon, a twelve incher, but first we’ll check to see how it’s going with just the smaller of the two. We also have a four-in syphon that is generally used to maintain the water level once the ponds are flooded.

The ten- inch has several outlets to fields, but right now our main objective is to flood our main duck pond. We start up the siphon using  a rotary air pump that sucks the air out of the pipe. As the air pressure in the pipe drops, water rises in the river-side pipe and eventually it spills over to fill up the down flow side of the pipe. When all the air is out of the pipe, we open a flapper valve on the end of the pipe and the water flows in an attempt to equalize the pressure, which would never happen unless the entire island floods.

Nearly twenty years ago we installed the two siphons pipes and they run out into the fields about three hundred yards. The pipes are a more efficient way to move water than using a ditch (in the delta), but they must be set up properly with vents or they will shut themselves off. The twelve-inch siphon is the same as the ten-inch, but the extra two inches in diameter increase the volume of flow dramatically – you can do the math.

Rob (my brother who makes these decisions) has labored to make major habitat changes this summer. Mayberry is responding, but the full benefit of the manipulations will not be observed for a full year or more. Here are some of the methods he’s used to manage the plants – upland and wetland.

1.) Aerial spraying of herbicides. The purpose of the aerial spraying is to kill large dense patches of cattail and tules that are unmanageable. When we quit growing corn at Mayberry, the cornfields became our main duck ponds and there were no cattails or tules on the property. We worked hard to get some started, but now they have taken over.

2.) Ground spraying of herbicides. Using an ATV with a tank and sprayer on it, my cousin Wes has used a ground attack to finish off what the aerial spraying did not kill – mostly in the upland areas. His spraying has killed Bermuda, frag mites and black berry bushes.

This berry bush was killed by the ground attack.

3.) Chopping with a tractor and asparagus mower. Chopping is the best way to create pathways through the property to facilitate pheasant hunting in the upland and duck hunting in the ponds.  Chopping reduces the height of the wetland plants allowing the pond water to show better. This is especially important in the early season. It also is used to manipulate plants into doing what you want. For example, chopping smartweed and watergrass will cause it to grow shorter with more seed heads. Chopping cocklebur and then flooding will kill them. 

4.) Plowing with a large tractor and disk. Although plowing creates difficult walking, a limited amount of plowing creates pathways and habitat diversity. We expect that the plowed areas will produce plants that prefer soft soil for germination. One of these plants is Johnson grass which is prefered for pheasant cover. The birds like to hide in it, but the dogs have no trouble hunting in it. Sometimes it grows so tall that we can’t see the pheasants fly out while we are standing in it. In the duck ponds the plow knocked down the dead cattail and tules creating trails and giving us better access for finding downed birds. We also expect the plowing to impact the plants that will succeed next year as we drain the ponds, but we won’t know what that is until that time.

Here are some photos.

The half-inch metal pipe connects to a rubber hose leading to the air pump. Once the ten-inch pipe is void of air, the valve is shut and  the pump is disconnected.

 

The flapper valve rotates 90 degrees inside the pipe. The pipe was originally installed with a gate valve, but the flapper valve is an improvement.

The above photo shows Bermuda that’s been hit by the ground attack.

The pond bottom of our main pond is covered with fat hen and swamp timothy. Here’s the fat hen, a good duck food that has staying power.

Here’s an example of the swamp timothy. It’s a preferred food, but doesn’t last through the season.

The swamp timothy produces large quantities of seeds and grows best on open pond bottoms where there is no competition from tall plants. The aerial spraying eliminated all the competing plants and the swamp timothy came on strong. Later the fat hen flourished and grew over the top of much of the swamp timothy.

This next photo shows two generations of smart weed. On the left is the older generation that germinated before the aerial spraying. Although it was not hit by the aerial spraying, it suffered from the following flood up. It is ready to collapse to the ground. Before we knew what smartweed was, we used to call it red weed. On the right side of the photograph is the second generation of smart weed. It is in the process of maturing and producing seeds.

In this next photo you can see how the various manipulations are creating diversity in the wetland  habitat.

The aerial spraying has set back the dense cover, the chopping has reduced that height of the plants and plowing has softened the soil and opened it up. The water is rising and it will be exciting to see how the ducks respond.

In the upland, the various activities are creating a smorgasbord of feed and cover for pheasants. The dying Bermuda should give way to more broadleaf plants that provide a better place for pheasants to survive.

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September ’09 Mayberry Update

It’s now been over two months since the arial spraying at Mayberry. Since that event, Rob has followed up by mowing, flooding and spraying the stuff that didn’t respond to our initial attempts.

Here are a few follow up photos.

Burmuda grass is a tough customer, but after a couple doses, this grass looks like it’s on it’s way out.

If not for chopping with the aspergrass chopper, this marsh wouldn’t show water. After flood up it won’t take long for the ducks to use this pond.

The fragmite population has been expanding, but our spraying has hit it hard. Different plants take longer to show results and we’ve been hitting this plant multiple times to make sure it dies.

The Farmall Tractor is too small for plowing, but it’s okay for spraying and mowing.

We brought in the neigbor’s big tractor to plow through the dead cattails and it did the job. It won’t be fun walking through the big clods, but it’s a necessary evil.

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The Goats of Mayberry

 

The goats are in and they’re doing their job. As many at 1,700 goats have been grazing on our duck club and they are removing much of the vegitation choking our duck ponds.

 

This is Walter the Peruvian goat herder. Talks about as much English as I do Spanish.

 

Walter says the great Pyrenees guard dogs make short work or coyotes if they bother the goats.

 

 

Here they are in action thinning down our thick stands of cattails and alkili bull rush.

 

Here’s one of our ponds as it is rising. Water shows much better after grazing – should attract ducks.

 

Not many ducks around yesterday, but a few sat on the edge of the flooded pasture to the north of us.

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Mayberry Farms in Summer – Cocklebur Battles

Arrived at Mayberry this morning about 9:30 AM. I was amazed at the amount of water on the ground on Sherman Island.

Rob is battling cockleburs and he needed me to cut off irrigation of one of our fields. He kills the cockleburs by chopping them and then flooding them up for a few days. The combination seems to work pretty well.

You can see that the cockleburs are taller than Lola.

 

We have good crops of swamp timothy, smart weed and water grass in our now-dry ponds so we don’t want to kill off the good stuff. Flooding can also kill the good stuff, but not if we put the water on and off quickly. Watergrass only improves with irrigation, but swamp timothy and smart weed can die off with too much irrigation.

One of our ponds has quite a bit of water in it from the cocklebur flood up and mallards are using it quite a bit. It has enough cover so you can’t see them except when they are landing or taking off. In the process of chopping, Rob got the tractor stuck. Looks like the pond bottom may be dry enough now so he can get it out and continue chopping.

Lola was with me and she got right to work looking for pheasants. I could tell she got a few whiffs and then she got very excited. I urged her on and then regretted it when she came back with a young pheasant. I was surprized at how small it was. Then Lola grabbed the bird when I took it from her and punctured my middle finger – blood everywhere. Oh well.

Hope a few of these morning doves stick around until September 1. Had a pretty good dove shoot last year.

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Mayberry Farms Superbowl Sunday Photo Shoot

(Double click on photos to see full size version.)

Superbowl Sunday was a great photography day at Mayberry Farms. The sun was good and the birds were cooperative. These pelicans took off from the pasture next door.

The egret passed by close enough to capture him in flight.

Lola was pumped up and chased everything that moved.

Mallards were hard to see until they jumped up – often close by.

Bitterns were easy to find, but impossible to see on the ground.

White-front geese were using the pasture.

Lola finally got this pheasant up and she was quite animated.

This spoony got up real close.

Cinnamin teal and spoonies were hanging out together in the open water.

This kite held onto a branch for dear life in the stiff breeze

This pelican floated by pretty close.

As I prepared to leave this shrike caught the last rays of afternoon sun.

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