Underwater Fish Habitat Enhancement in the Upper Niagara River!

The New York Power Authority has announced that work has been completed on placing four artificial reefs between the Grand Island and Tonawanda shorelines. The projects are located upstream and downstream of the south Grand Island bridges, off the west shore of Motor Island and off Gratwick Park in North Tonawanda. They are outside of commercial shipping channels and will be monitored with underwater cameras. Populations of various species of fish, including muskellunge, walleye, northern pike and large-and small-mouth bass, are expected to be able to use the structures as areas for safe rest and to forage. This attempt to enhance the Niagara River's ecosystem is the result of terms within the power authoritie's recent 50-year re-license agreement which requires the authority to provide money to local not-for-profits and governments for various greenway projects. Other planned habitat improvement projects include restoration of Strawberry Island and wetlands restoration at Beaver Island State Park.

Wildlife Discovery on Scajaquada Creek!

Our dear Scajaquada Creek suprised us again when a rumored mammalian predator made a smashing appearance on camera. The celebrity mammal was showing off for three Riverkeeper staff as we paddled the creek collecting water samples.



Can ya see her? There on the rock, posing for the field guide description of her kind as "Sleek-bodied with lustrous fur"? Take a closer look!






She's a Mink, Mustela vison, little cousin to the otter. We busted her playing, swimming around in gleeful spirals in the middle of the creek, but she spied our boats and lept ashore. She's a high-octane little predator, eating anything she can catch on land or sea, and it's a good sign for the health of Scajaquada that she has chosen to live here. We've seen blurry tracks in the past year that gave hints, clues, and hopes, but now it's confirmed: Scaj is home to a new wild creature. Welcome Mink!

Niagara River Duck Lunation

Lunation: Diving Ducks Muster on the River
(March 2, 2008)

Sunday afternoon, high overcast, about 30 degrees, no wind: My son Taylor and I walk the breakwall from Squaw Island out well past the Peace Bridge to a point where the ice build up blocks our progress. Great slabs of ice have piled up along both sides of the breakwall and out into the upper Niagara rapids, making islands and protected pools where thousands of ducks and gulls are resting or fishing.

Stretching across the river all the way to Canada, whole colonies have sorted themselves by species into separate cold water countries defined by harbor walls and ice spits. They are mainly members of the large and various family of diving ducks, well suited to the deep, fast waters of Niagara.

Scaup, the males as black and white as saddle shoes, are the most common and the most active. They seem to be paired up already and they ride the river like a carnival ride, roller coasting backwards downstream, then flying back up to where they started: a continuing elliptical movement with a bit of diving in between. A brown-backed female is paused on the water, a fish tail wiggling in her bill. At last she stretches her neck and swallows it whole.

Canvasbacks, their big reddish-brown heads wing-tucked, rest in a backwater in one long line, as evenly spaced as beads on a string. They seem to share an exact sense of personal space.

Common goldeneye are present as are the small but beautiful buffleheads, the males mostly white with their great round heads sporting patches of mallard purple and green.

They remind me of the hooded merganser we saw three weeks ago on a sub-zero February day farther down river at the mouth of Tonawanda Creek. He was diving with two red-crested females around the old turnstile bridge pilings. They were so shy they flew off as soon as they saw us, but not before we got a good look at the male’s fully raised circular crest, a yin-yang mandala of black and white feathers half the size of his black and fox-brown body. Vat a duck! First herald of the circus that’s come to town.

Amazing to think this scene has been repeated for millennia at this place where lake meets river and the river turns north, the same way most of these ducks are heading in their annual spring migration.