Subject: [Tweeters] Samish geese
Date: Feb 2 10:09:49 2005
From: Connie Sidles - csidles at isomedia.com


Hey tweets, Marietta Rawson, the founder of Northwest Montesorri School and
an educator for more than 60 years, once wrote an essay about what children
do for adults. Among their many gifts to us, she said, children preserve
language and traditions. When adults teach children these things, we pass
along to them our own history and values, but the children give back to us
the necessity of preserving our culture for the future. Conversely, if
children fail to learn their parents' language and traditions, the culture
dies.

I was mindful of Marietta's wisdom late yesterday while I was out at the
Skagit Game Reserve. I had been to see the gyr (a no-show) and was consoling
myself by driving around the flats looking for snow geese and swans (also
not in evidence). Suddenly along Maupin Road just before dusk, I saw a vast
expanse of white puffs in a field.

It seemed that the entire array of western Washington snow geese had made up
its collective mind to gather in this one field. I estimated more than
10,000 geese snuffling in the grass, napping, nattering, preening, marching
about or otherwise leading their goosely lives. I set up my scope and
watched them for about half an hour. They looked like they were settling in
for the night, so I figured I had plenty of time to study them. But I was
wrong. All at once, some hidden signal galvanized the flock, and it rose
into the air as though an invisible hand had raised a white curtain.

When I was a little girl, my mother bought white flannel sheets to put on my
bed in the winter. She said they were warmer than cotton. She and I used to
play a game at bedtime. We would pull the top covers off my bed, and I would
crawl onto the mattress. Then my mother would take the top flannel sheet and
fling it into the air so it ballooned above me like a parachute.

Those snow geese flying overhead reminded me of that childish game, except
that yesterday, I had a living blanket of white flying above me. As they
flew, the geese honked musically, each with its own song. Now, you might
think it is contradictory to call a honk a song, but when 10,000 snow geese
are calling all together in a chorus, they sing a sweet lullaby indeed, one
that faded out into the distance as they flew off to settle onto the water.
I flung my scope into the car and raced for the dike to watch the geese
land. As I stood on the berm, the sinking sun cast a gold shadow over the
water, dimming the Olympics in the distance until they became mere shadows
of mountains. Across their face flew V's of trumpeter and tundra swams,
stroking their way to join the geese.

My childhood and my maturity melted into one moment of bliss.

How I wish that children today could have that simple pleasure of seeing
such a flight. How could any video game compare? How could a movie or
telephonic messaging raise the spirit to such a height - or be so very real?
I don't know about you, but I rarely see children in the wilderness when I
go birding. It is a loss both to them and to us.

(I will note here, if you will permit a plug, that Seattle Audubon tries
hard to address this problem through its Fun in Urban Nature program -
F.U.N. I've supported this program for years, and you can, too, if you wish,
with a small donation to SAS earmarked for F.U.N.)

Here is everything that I saw yesterday:

pied-billed grebe
red-necked grebe
double-crested cormorant
great blue heron
trumpeter swan
tundra swan
snow goose
mallard
green-winged teal
American wigeon
northern pintail
greater scaup
surf scoter
harlequin duck
common goldeneye
bufflehead
American coot
black-bellied plover
glaucous-winged gull
pigeon guillemot
bald eagle
northern harrier
red-tailed hawk
rough-legged hawk
rock pigeon
American crow
common raven
black-capped chickadee
American robin
European starling
song sparrow
white-crowned sparrow
dark-eyed junco
red-winged blackbird

- Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com