The Halloween Flight

Posted on October 26, 2016, 6:06 pm
3 mins

Written By: Hannah Riggs

 

Many associate late October and Halloween with hay rides, pumpkin patches, trick or treaters, and costumes. But for waterfowlers, late October also brings about what is known as the “Halloween Flight”.

The “Halloween Flight” occurs within 10 to 14 days of Halloween every year. During this time, a large amount of migration down the flyaway occurs. Waterfowl experts, Rocky Leflore and J Paul Jackson give three major reasons why this flight occurs during the same day’s year to year.

“The length of daylight as the main factor and weather and availability of food as minor factors that influence migration every year,” Jackson said.

When there are predictable factors that remain consistent every year, such as length of daylight, it becomes one of biggest factors to predict duck’s migration.

“We know that as the days get shorter in October, there are going to be certain species of ducks, like Gadwalls or Blue-winged Teal for instance, that you are going to start seeing,” Jackson said.

While length of daylight affects all ducks, some species are more heavily affected by other factors such as climate.

“Other species, like Pintails and Mallards are going to be more climate-driven. For example, if we are having several years of cool falls, then we are going to probably see even more ducks migrate down. Because now we have cooler temps pushing them down as well as shorter days,” Leflore said.

As the season continues, food availability becomes a more important factor than in the early season.

“For heartier species, like Mallards, food availability comes to play a bigger role. However, like I’ve said before, daylight hours are what early migration comes down to. It is the most predictable of all the factors,” Jackson said.

All of these factors combined, help show what some believe to by the enigma of the Halloween Flight.

“A lot of people talk about the Halloween Flight and think there is some great mystery to it. The reality is, days shorten in the same fashion every single year. The amount of daylight we had on October 31 in 1950 is going to be the exact same amount of daylight we are going to have on October 31 in 2016,” Jackson said.