As inconvenient as last weekend's blizzard across much of Minnesota was for people, it was more so — even deadly in scattered instances — for pheasants and some other wildlife. Additional snowfall Wednesday across the far southern part of the state didn't help.
Here's a look-see at how Minnesota critters from the Iowa border to the boundary waters are faring during this never-ending winter.
Pheasants: Nesting impact
In a more normal spring, some hen ringnecks already would be nesting (or preparing to). Their breeding season is triggered by lengthening days, and now, in mid-April, if the weather were more temperate and the landscape drier, some pheasant hens would start to lay an egg a day in their nests — or at least dropping an occasional egg in preparation for that process — until a dozen or so of the fragile ovals were collected and incubation could begin.
This year, even before the recent snowstorm, hen pheasants were unprepared to begin that springtime ritual, due to low temperatures.
The good news is that the blizzard's strong winds blew snow off some fields, and beneath Monday's sunshine, pheasants were seen across southern and western Minnesota scratching for waste grain in those areas.
"Pheasants had come through the winter in pretty good shape," said Nicole Davros, Department of Natural Resources farmland wildlife populations and research group leader in Madelia. "Because of that, I don't think we'll have a lot of starvation due to the blizzard. They can go without food for a little while. I'm more worried about the storm's effect on nesting."
Roadside surveys last fall showed Minnesota pheasants down 26 percent compared to 2016. Most of the decline was due to habitat losses, especially a falloff of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) acres.
In 2007, when Minnesota had 1.83 million CRP acres, the state's ringneck harvest topped 600,000 birds. Since then, more than 700,000 CRP acres have been converted to cropland, and the pheasant kill has dropped to below 200,000.