Hello tweets,

I just wanted to report something some of you probably already know. On Wednesday, 18 March, Netta Smith and I saw the biggest concentration of Snow Geese I have ever seen, at one spot north of Fir Island Road. There is a big pull-out, and a lot of other people were there, including kids that scared up a flock while their mother laughed. But it was really a spectacle, and as is often the case, many of the geese continued feeding with people surprisingly close.

Even better, yesterday (21 March) we encountered a giant flock on the water at the south end of the Potholes Reservoir, a long white blanket that was awe-inspiring. I estimated it contained about 4,000 birds, but I'll try to get a better idea when I look more closely at our photos. Better yet, birds were coming in from high in the air, some vees so high I could barely see them, and circling around and dropping down into this flock. I presume they were coming from agricultural lands where they had been feeding. We are ruining the Columbia Basin for the birds that used to inhabit it but enhancing it for geese and perhaps cranes.

Dennis Paulson
Seattle