Bluebills come back in droves to Manitoba's Delta Marsh

Minnesota wildlife artist David Maass has hunted at the famed Sports Afield duck camp on Manitoba's Delta Marsh for more than 30 years. Many of his visits occurred when the late outdoor writer, conservationist and hobnobber Jimmy Robinson, founder of the camp, was still holding forth there, chomping cigars and talking big.

Rightly so. Robinson's list of guests over the years included a lot of Average Joe waterfowlers, mostly from Minnesota. But Clark Gable also shot there, and Robinson also counted among his shooting companions TV and movie star Robert Stack, among many other notables.

The attraction for wingshooters visiting the camp was Jimmy's warm company, his card games -- and the marsh's ducks, particularly bluebills

But in recent years, bluebills -- scaup -- have largely gone missing. Which made Maass' recent trip to Jimmy's old haunt all the more memorable, because this year, the 'bills were back.

"I've never seen anything like it, not even when Jimmy had the camp,'' Maass said. "No one really had an explanation for it, except that freshwater shrimp seemed abundant in the marsh this year, and perhaps they attracted the bluebills.''

Delta Marsh didn't hold many other species of ducks while Maass visited. But when the bluebills rose up on the marsh, taking wing, "they looked like clouds. About 90 percent of the ducks we shot were bluebills,'' Maass said.

Historically, many bluebills that have staged on Delta Marsh have flown on to Lake of the Woods, then down to Leech Lake and Lake Winnibigoshish in Minnesota, en route to the Mississippi River Valley and warmer climes.

The Minnesota DNR reported last week that in fact some concentrations of bluebills have moved into the state, with more expected this weekend and in coming days.