The chosen field

At supper a couple of nights ago, an announcement:

“Tomorrow we should take one last run up to Dead Creek!”

Dead Creek is where we customarily fail to see migrating snow geese. The 90 minute journey is nice enough, but we’ve been up and down that stretch of road so often, it has become a lot less entertaining.

Our most recent visit to there was rewarded with a very limited view of a flock of the geese that had settled into a distant field. We could barely claim to have seen them and we’d been debating whether or not we’d make another attempt.

Deep down, I think I was hoping for one more chance, but Grant is the driver and it had to be something he wanted to do too.

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“Tomorrow” was Monday and rain was expected but we decided it didn’t matter. The geese would be there regardless, – or not. Light rain would hardly deter waterfowl.

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At the Gage Road viewing platform, Grant scanned the sky.

No bird of any sort to be seen or heard.

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Perhaps they were behind schedule. We had not driven all this way just to give up so soon.

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While we waited, I searched for other subjects to photograph but in a big, empty and flat wetland, there was not much to see.

Until…

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Quite suddenly a flock approached from the north.

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They were far away when Grant spotted them, just pinpricks against the dark sky, but we could hear their calls.

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They passed over, banked and came back past the abandoned osprey nest.

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It was not a huge flock,

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Grant figured 250-300 birds.

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They dropped down and quickly settled in the same field where we’d seen those geese at the end of October.

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Clearly, the chosen field.

Which is no doubt why the viewing platform is where it is.

As we watched the birds, a car came down the track and a young man emerged, carrying a large telescope. We assumed he was a professional but it turned out that like us, he was just very keen, having driven 3 hours from northern Vermont.

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The young man had a particular interest…

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He was hoping to see a Ross’s goose, pictured above. Apparently he’d read that there was one with this flock.

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It is possible that one of the dark-coloured birds in my photos was such a goose but not necessarily as snow geese morph, passing through a “blue phase”.

The Ross’s goose is much more rare than the snow goose.

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Here is a very short film of the snow geese arriving:

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Inevitably, I was torn between watching and wanting to capture the images.

Once the birds were on the ground, they settled quickly.

It was very noticeable that a flock of snow geese is far quieter than a flock of Canada geese that chatter and move about constantly.

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The snow goose flock however seemed content and unlikely to get airborne again any time soon, so we left the young man to his vigil and set off home, well pleased with our day.

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