A New Whistle (Whistling Duck) on the Preserve

One of the whistling ducks that arrived on Chipco Preserve.

We have a new visitor at Chipco Preserve.

At least, new to us.

Four whistling ducks have been flying overhead daily.

The first thing I noticed wasn't the bird, but the sound. A soft whistle. A little high. A little sweet. Not the rough quack one might expect from a duck, but something more delicate, almost like a small wooden flute moving through the air.

Then you see them.

Long-legged. Long-necked. Standing taller than an ordinary duck. A little more upright. A little more watchful. They look like they are halfway between a duck and something regal, something that once owned the sky.

These appear to be black-bellied whistling ducks, a species once more closely associated with Mexico, Central, and South America. Over the last several decades, though, they have been spreading farther into Florida and beyond. The University of South Florida’s Breeding Bird Atlas describes their expansion into Florida as “astonishing,” beginning in the late 1970s, and Audubon Florida notes that breeding was confirmed in Florida in 1990. Since then, they have become more common in places where wetland habitat, open feeding areas, and tree cavities or nesting boxes are available.

So why are we seeing them now?

The answer is probably a mix of things.

Their range has been expanding. Their numbers have been increasing. Florida has the kind of warm climate, shallow wetlands, ponds, open ground, and agricultural edges that they can use. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission notes that black-bellied whistling ducks are social birds often found around water, mud flats, agricultural lands, and places where they can perch or nest in trees. Cornell also notes that the species has steadily expanded in the southern United States and increased in number over recent decades.

But standing on the Preserve, the explanation feels simpler.

They found something they liked.

A little water, a little quiet, a place to land and look around.

That is the part that stays with us. We have not seen them here before, and now here they are, stepping into the story of this land as if they had been considering it for some time.

Wildlife does that. It returns in its own time and its own language.

Black-bellied Whistling DuckJerome Fischer

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At Chipco Preserve, we pay attention to these things because they are not small to us. A new bird on the land is a sign. It tells us something about movement, habitat, weather, water, and change. It tells us the world is not still. It tells us the Preserve is part of a much larger map, one drawn not by roads or property lines, but by wings.

The whistling ducks are part of that map now.

Maybe they're passing through, or maybe they'll stay.

Maybe they'll come and go, following their own old instructions, written somewhere in their bones.

Whatever they decide, we are glad they found us.

And for now, when that soft whistle rises over the trees, we will stop and listen to the land announcing change in the gentlest possible way.