Hey tweets, I located the pair of Ross's geese this morning around 9:30 a.m.
by glancing up at the sky and noting a vee of geese flapping overhead. I
pulled over to the side of the road, hauled out my binocs and saw two white
ones in amongst the Canadas. The white ones looked like geese with no faces,
so I was pretty sure they were the Ross's. Unfortunately, the vee swirled
off to the east without landing.

I don't know if you've ever chased a hot air balloon, but my husband John
and I did that once. In the late summer, in the still of the evening, we
often see the hot air balloons rising majestically over Bellevue. One
evening, we decided it would be fun to chase them in our car and see them
land. So we bombed over to Bellevue, with John driving and me leaning out
the window shouting directions. This is usually how we divvy up the labor
when crazy driving is required. John comes from the graveled backroads of
Iowa and has nerves of steel in urban traffic. Either that, or he has a
bedrock belief that other drivers on the road are sensible folk who really
do know how to drive. I, raised in the city, belong to a different school of
thought, namely, that we are recently evolved chimpanzees with very little
understanding of the laws of physics, let alone the laws of driving.

In any case, that evening we zigzagged through the fields and streets of
Bellevue, keeping the hot air balloons in view. Things got really
interesting when one of the balloons decided it was time to descend. The
wind failed to cooperate, and the balloon collided with Bellevue Square. We
almost did, too. Luckily, no one was hurt. I'm sure the paying customers in
the balloon basket got the thrill of a lifetime, not to mention heart
palpitations, but John and I were nearly as thrilled too.

This experience came to mind this morning when I saw the geese flying off to
the east. I decided to give chase, despite the fact that John was still at
home in his pj's, clutching his laptop and a cup of coffee instead of
sitting behind the wheel of our car. Never mind. I was off, dodging semis,
missing curbs, hitting yellow lights and generally being pretty stupid. It
was a riot. I think I'm entering my second childhood.

I managed to keep the geese in sight as they hit the hills on the east, flew
south to the end of the valley, then headed north again. I thought they were
going to fly over the ridge on the west, never to be seen again, but no,
they flew along it toward the field where they've been seen the past two
days. Unfortunately, that field was occupied by an orange-vested guy doing
something technical. The geese didn't like him at all and flew away. I lost
them against the background of the brush.

I drove to a pullout at the intersection of Frager Road and 200th to sit and
ponder. I had to rule on an argument with myself over whether I had got a
good enough view of the geese in flight to count them on my Big Year list.
On the one hand, those geese simply had to be the Ross's geese people have
been seeing. On the other hand, maybe they were a new pair of snow geese,
not Ross's at all. Were their faces really flat, or was that just wishful
thinking? I had really wanted a good look at those geese on the ground. Darn
but birding is frustrating. As myself to'ed and fro'ed, I happened to glance
out my window at the field. Holy smokes, there were the Ross's geese. The
flock must have teleported itself into the field when I wasn't looking. I
got out my scope and studied them for 20 minutes, as newly arriving birders
drove up for a look, too. It was glorious. - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com