Who would have thought 30 years ago that the worst of the Mississippi Delta's farm land – at the time being cleared of trees, leveled, and levee-ed for the creation of catfish ponds – would become an important wintering area for scaup, shovelers, mallards and, yes,  coots. Who would have thought that a resident population of Canada geese would emerge side by side with Mr. Whiskers? Well, that is exactly what happened when several hundred thousand acres of land too poor to farm and too wet to drain suddenly found a new use: the commercial catfish business. Belzoni, Mississippi became the self proclaimed “Catfish Capital of the World," and the Delta suddenly swarmed with bluebills, shovelers, coots and slow-flying ruddy ducks.
 
From the air the catfish ponds looked like checker boards – a sea of mowed levees with 10- to 20-acre ponds stretching from horizon to horizon.  In these ponds were millions of catfish being fed daily a granular pellet feed that ducks could not resist. Nor, by the way could cormorants resist the temptation to feed on the fingerling catfish and soon the largest population of cormorants on earth was polluting the Delta skies and fouling the waters of lakes where roosted in cypress trees. But that is another story.

Once the ducks found the catfish ponds on their way south many short-stopped in the Delta rather than going on to their traditional wintering grounds along the Gulf Coast. Louisiana bluebill hunters certainly noticed the decline. Several hundred thousand diving ducks began calling the catfish ponds home and so it remained for the past three decades. Also, the catfish ponds became an important loafing and sanctuary area for mallards and gadwall. They could escape the hunting pressure of the rice fields and timber by rafting on the catfish ponds during the day where little hunting took place. Catfish farmers did not want hunters making a mess of their levees with their 4-wheel drive trucks. Nor was any place for hunters to hide on the golf-course mowed levees. So, the ducks were basically safe.

Now, as fast as the catfish ponds and catfish industry arrived, it is leaving. Record-high grain prices have made the cost of feeding the fish too expensive. Foreign imported fish have under-cut the market. The demand for Mr. Whiskers has evaporated. Thousands of catfish ponds are being drained and turned into fields of soybeans and corn . Many processing plants have closed. Thousands of ponds that for three decades have been a major wintering area for diving ducks now very much look like the rest of the Delta, flat and dry and duckless.

So, once again the divers will be looking for a new winter home. Perhaps the hunters at Lake Bourne on the Louisiana coast or those who venture out on Mobile Bay will see the result. Or, maybe the birds will find the Chesapeake or Laguna Madre. But one thing is certain:  they will not be calling the catfish ponds of the Mississippi Delta a winter paradise any longer. Nor will their new homes provide daily food via a mechanized machine spewing granulated pellets all around them. It should be interesting to see where hundreds of thousands of ducks go. Stay tuned.