Dear Judy and Tweeters,

The Snow Geese are indeed absolutely brilliant right now--approachable and numerous!

I love going down to Fir Island and seeing them. Sometimes, however, the quixotic drive to count or estimate the flock intereferes with the pleasure of being surrounded by such an immense flock of white birds.

To answer the question, a good way to count them is to figure out what ten looks like, then a hundred, and then figure out how many hundreds there are. What I do when they are all bunched up, is to count vertical sections, figuring that there are a hundred in each section. I look at the far edge of the flock and pick one bird's head as my boundary between one hundred and the next. Last weekend my estimates ranged from 8000 to 12,000 after a number of estimations; I settled on ten thousand, since I got more counts above that figure than below.

Not only were there ten thousand Snow Geese there on Fir Island, but over at Jensen Access there were at least an additional 70,000 or more ducks out on the bay. I counted them by figuring out what a thousand looked like--and there were well over seventy of those! A hundred thousand birds would not be any stretch at all, since there were big flocks of swans, rafts of gulls, Dunlin flocks flying here and there, etcetera!

As to places around the world, I cannot resist mentioning one--the Bosphorus in April. That's in European Turkey, just north and west of Istanbul. Thousands of White Storks fly across there, and if a birder can get up on the hills above this narrow strait, the flocks will fly so low that their wings can be heard! Add in hundreds of Short-toed Eagles and a wonderful assortment of other raptors, plus goodly flocks of Black Storks, and you can see why it is considered such a world-class spot to observe big flocks of migrating birds!



Caratfeathers at aol.com wrote:
.....There is actually a question at the end of this wild goose tale, so read on or scroll down :-) :-) :-) ....

It was one of those days when I felt the need for a break. When this happens, I go birding, as I suspect many of you do also! My usual winter tonic away from work is to go someplace where I will see hundreds or thousands of Sandhill Cranes and / or Snow Geese.

Before moving to the Pacific Northwest, I would visit Bosque del Apache in New Mexico or the Sony Bono refuge (Salton Sea) in CA; visits to these places required a 4 or 7 hour drive, respectively, from my home in Arizona. When I lived in Indianapolis, IN I would visit Jasper Pulaski.

But today I had only to drive less than 40 minutes to Skagit Flats (Stanwood, WA) to find thousands of Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens). I took the rural route from the south (Marine Drive) and, upon driving down the slight grade before crossing the Stillaguamish River, I scanned the fields, but didn't see any large patches of white. Feeling a little disappointed, I continued on north. And there they were! I should have looked straight ahead instead of west towards the sound! The majority were back in the field a ways to the west merging into a less dense population near the paved road where I was. So I pulled off onto a two-track farm road just a few yards so I wouldn't be a traffic hazard, which put me between two large flat fields and south of the geese. As I sat quietly in my vehicle the geese worked their way (they were munching grass at a pretty good clip) towards the corner of the field near me. Soon, geese from the inner area started flying in, in groups of 6-1!
0, to
join those nearer the paved road (and my vehicle). Before long the field by the main road on the north side of the two-track was filled with Snow Geese, causing quite a few travelers to slow down or even come to a stop.

It wasn't long before geese were foraging within 8 feet of me. After a while some of those flying in from the west edge of the mass decided to land in the field on the south side of the two-track (farm road) and geese already on the ground started moving, as a group, slowly across the two-track to join those to the south. I was surrounded (well, almost....there were about 6-8 brave geese who wandered behind my car which was facing in towards the fields...so I was surrounded by hundreds of geese on three sides). And I, despite the dampness of the off and on light rain, had all my windows down so I could enjoy the goose chatter...I was about to say cacophony, but the sounds were more enjoyable to my ears than that word might imply!

What I found really interesting, both visually and behaviorally, was that, as the geese moved from the north side of the farm road to the south side, many stopped and remained on the two-track. As I looked forward through my windshield, they formed a dense carpet the width of the road for about a quarter of a mile ahead! The field actually changed smoothly into the dirt track on the north side, but there was a low fence (just posts and a wire) and a ditch on the south edge of the track. Some of the geese flew over these obstacles and landed a few yards away, but many of the others just stopped and filled up the farm road! Is this typical goose behavior?

Since another car had pulled up behind me, then left again after taking some photos, without disturbing the geese, I figured I could probably start my truck and back out without causing a massive lift-off. And so I withdrew from this wonderful experience, rejuvenated once again.

My question...actually two questions....are:

1) Does any one else from around the world have a story about a favorite place for watching thousands of geese, cranes, etc.?
and
2) What is the best method for estimating the number of birds present in a situation like this? I feel safe in saying there were many hundreds (probably thousands) of individuals in the Skagit flock, but I would like to be able to make a more confident and tighter estimate.

Peace and Happiness!

Judy Rowe Taylor
Mukilteo, WA
caratfeathers at aol.com


Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch

near Lyman (Skagit County), Washington

garybletsch at yahoo.com


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