Catching a Glimpse of Migrating Geese

The gregarious and noisy goose is usually not hard to find, except on migration. Then they ascend to an invisible world, becoming citizens of heaven for a time. Sometimes you can glimpse them from earth as you scan the sky with binoculars. On the last day of March this year thousands of geese flew up the Connecticut Valley on their way north to the Arctic tundra, and I was fortunate enough to see some of them.

They were not Canada geese, but snow geese, the most abundant member of this family in North America. As more and more of the flocks passed overhead it became clear that most of the eastern population, about a million strong, was moving from the wintering grounds on the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays to Lake Champlain or the St Lawrence River. Just the fringe of the flight was passing over central New England.

If they are low enough you can hear them calling in chorus, but this was a day to only see them. As they came overhead the mid-day sun shone through the wings, and each bird shimmered with a ghostly glow, almost blanching out the black of the wing tips, which usually contrasts starkly with the snow white of most of the wing and the entire body.

They flew in formation, not the tight sharp vees of the Canada goose, but in a rounded, undulating chevron, the leading birds constantly changing and smaller groups breaking off to form their own chevrons, then recombining again. In one group of over 500 birds, there were a dozen or more separate chevrons stretched across the sky, yet close enough to be one flock. They looked like waves breaking apart as they roll upon the shore, giving rise to the nickname "wavies." This day they were silent spirits, angels or ghosts wending their way across heaven.

All is not well with the snow goose because they are too abundant. On the breeding grounds of the tundra, vast areas are denuded of vegetation as the bands of geese graze the ground, pulling up the plants by the roots. Sport hunting in the south has been expanded, but it is not enough. Perhaps the native American method of harvesting both birds and eggs on the northern nesting grounds must be expanded.

We have similar overpopulation problems with the Canada goose in New England. Last week a few of us searched for a rare pink-footed goose reported at a golf course in Dennis on Cape Cod. It turned into the classic "wild goose chase," because the bird had already left for Greenland or Iceland to join its fellows, but there still were several mated pairs of Canada geese there, unable to find an unoccupied nesting site.

Several hundred had spent the winter there, and we noticed how the fairways were literally covered with goose droppings. A golfer struck up a conversation and told how one goose had been killed by a speeding golf ball. We assured him that birders would love to see fewer of these geese, but we prize the rare ones. He was amazed that one fellow from California had flown all the way east to see the rare pink-footed goose, also in vain.

The trip was not a failure, however, as we visited the nearby bayshore and saw three flocks of another goose flying by low over the surf. This is the famous "sea goose" of Cape Cod, the brant. It is smaller and much darker than the Canada goose, its name derived from the old english form of the word "burnt," indicating the sooty color of their plumage.

The brant rarely comes inland and much of the population winters on Cape Cod, feeding on the eel grass that grows on the bottom of shallow ocean bays. This grass had a sudden massive die-off in the 1930s and the numbers of brant crashed, but both recovered nicely in the last four decades.

We watched the birds fly by out over the waves, black ghosts this time, but still bent on that distant destination. We were glad to see them. If the snow goose is a bright angel of heaven, then the brant is a dark angel of the sea, but both are welcome - in numbers we can all live with.