Geesin’ in D-ville

Snow Goose Chen caerulescens

Snow Goose Chen caerulescens

Snow Goose Chen caerulescens

Snow Goose Chen caerulescens
(dark morph)

Banded Snow Geese YC60 and 28EC

Spot the Ross's Goose

Ross’s Goose Chen rossii

Tundra Bean Goose Anser serrirostris

Tundra Bean Goose Anser serrirostris

Tundra Bean Goose Anser serrirostris

Plage Municipale, Drummondville

Fellow geesers

Snow

Golden Eagle Aquila chrysaetos

  Went out east to Drummondville yesterday to do some geesin’ with G+B. When we got to the Plage Municipale in the morning, there were a total of five Snow Geese, and it was snowing. D’oh.

  To kill time before their inevitable return, we circled through the streets of Drummondville, a mind-numbing sprawl of a town…a suburb with its own suburbs. In front of a pet store in a strip mall, we found a lone Song Sparrow in a bush. Fun!

  At a nearby sewage treatment plant, there were Northern Shovelers aplenty, and a surprise flyby from a Golden Eagle.

  When we returned to the Snow Goose spot in the afternoon, we were not disappointed. The grand spectacle was underway, the geese were back. Being in the presence of tens of thousands of birds in flight is breath-taking, and I highly recommend it. Individual honks became a dull roar. Thousands of organisms moving as one.

  At one point I heard what sounded like a jet engine, and saw that the entire flock was up. The flock split into two groups, and whirled around in giant roaring masses, then approached one another and intertwined, like charging medieval armies.

  I’ve seen estimates of the number of Snow Geese there that range between 50,000 and 160,000. I stopped counting at about 36,448 (three had headaches), but a conservative 85,000 seems like a reasonable guess.

  Mixed in with the Snow Geese were at least two to three Ross’s Goose, a rare, miniaturized version of a Snow Goose. While trying to pick through the drifts of Snow Geese in search of more Ross’s, I eventually went goose-blind, and lost the ability to pick out individual geese from the mass.

  After about 30 minutes, the rock star goose showed up. A lone Tundra Bean Goose, a rare vagrant from Eurasia dropped onto the beach directly in front of the gathered phalanx of admirers. It was often aggressive to the Snow Geese around it, sending off any goose that approached. I saw plenty in Korea, but of course, as is the case with all vagrants, a lost bird always draws a crowd, in spite of how common it may be somewhere else. It’s getting nippy out.