I'm not a birder, but the images (on the Middle Creek website, www.pgc.state.pa.us.) of thousands upon thousands of snow geese filling the sky made me want to view this spectacle up close. I'm not what you would call, by any stretch of the imagination, an outdoors girl. I'm most comfortable in museums looking at images of wildlife nicely contained in a frame where big bears can't eat me. My son spends much time in Minnesota's Boundary Waters on canoe trips where he can enjoy the silence of being unplugged from his phones, yes plural, that he uses in his job in the political world. There are many bears in the Boundary Waters. He didn't get his camping genes from me.
But, I was excited to see this migration of snow geese and so my husband and I headed up to Middle Creek last weekend, armed with my little digital point and shoot camera and binoculars. When we got there we noticed many groups of birders and photographers, with huge, two-foot-long lenses. We followed the crowd for a short hike to Willow Point Trail, where the public can observe the geese flying in and out over the 360-acre lake. There were hundreds of snow geese there that day, but not the 55,000 that the website had estimated on their almost-daily updates. However, the snow geese did fly over in small formations, and it was a treat to see the sun reflecting off their white wings as they glided into perfect landings. We also saw many ducks and tundra swans on the lake. It was hard to get good pictures with my camera, as you're not allowed to get too close. We decided this wasn't really the peak time yet (first week in March), so we'd come back.
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Yesterday morning I called the Visitor's Center at Middle Creek to find out the best time to see the snow geese. Al, who answered the phone, was very helpful. He told me the best time to see lots of snow geese (and the estimate yesterday was holding at 55,000), was around 5:30 pm at Willow Point. Apparently the snow geese leave the lake in the morning to go find feeding grounds, sometimes as far as 20 miles away, and return in the evening to roost on the lake.
So off we went yesterday, excitedly anticipating a sky full of thousands and thousands of snow geese returning to the lake. This is what we saw when we got there:
That's ok, I told my husband, it's only 5:15. It was pretty cold, but we persevered. We did get to see a lot of tundra swans, and even spotted a short-eared owl gliding close to the ground after we'd noticed him perched on a tall, dead tree.
Got to play with Max, the 100-lb Old English Sheepdog that we'd met there last weekend. Anyone who knows me will know what a treat THAT would be...we've had two Old Englishes and nothing makes me happier than seeing these floppy, playful clowns!
Got to talk to another couple who'd driven a long distance to see the geese, and who finally announced they were giving up and heading to happy hour somewhere. One woman came with her IPad and was showing people exactly what we were waiting for. They'd been elsewhere in the 6,254-acre facility at the right time apparently.
We waited a while longer, and when the sun went down, headed home, determined to come back before they make their way back north.
I had been curious about how they actually count the numbers of birds on any given day. Al from the Visitor's Center told me this. Just how we can tell what one sheet of paper looks like, and what 50 sheets of paper looks like, their game warden, who lives at Middle Creek, knows what 1,000 geese looks like, and can estimate what 50,000 geese looks like. Apparently he hears them during the night, and if there's a big change in the noise level, he will go out in the ten-minute window of opportunity at dawn to count them before they fly off. That's how we get the updates on the website.
I'll be heading up there several times this week, hoping to be at the right place at the right time, but mother nature has her own agenda! Where did those darn kids go last night, anyway?!
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