S
now Geese and other waterfowl migrate along the Missouri River on Iowa's west
border. This is one of their midwest routes taken while flying south.
I visited DeSoto Bend National Wildlife Refuge on November 22 and 23, 2002.
At that time, the count was 140,000+ snow geese and 7000+ mallard ducks. I
went simply because I had never seen this many waterfowl at one time. The
trip did not disappoint, as I was treated to hearing so many geese gaggling at
once (yes, it was loud), and to watch first hand as they took flight, as a group,
was certainly an awesome experience.
The snow geese would be calmly free-floating on the water, gradually drifting apart from each other. I can only describe their incessant gaggling as barking dogs on helium - shorts bursts of gaggles and a bit high pitched. There was no discernable pattern to the sounds, but it seemed about 10-20 minutes or so before they would all take off, their overall pitch would become slightly higher and the intensity would increase. Then suddenly, all would become quiet as one edge of geese flock floating on the river would lift up into the air, just as if someone was fluffing a bed sheet creating that huge ripple that flows along the mattress line as it settles down, except it kept going up and up!
The far side of the flock takes flight
You could hear the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of beating wings in unison while taking off - not as a flap, flap, flap, but more as a long whoosh of air as each successive line of geese was pulled into flight by its air-borne neighbor. Now, as the geese would take to the air, one after another, they'd begin a circling flight that would last up to 20 minutes. Their flight would take them around the river's bend, as if a tornado made of wings, beaks and feathers were following some grand plan. There, you could see layers of waterfowl at different elevations and at different distances circling within this great swarm, and when passing directly over head would elicit oohs and awes from all who witness this event. I really had no idea why they would take off about once an hour.
Watch a 443k WMV movie of geese taking flight.
I speculated at first it was because of a slight cold wind, and they'd 'shuffle' the flock around so the fowl on the edges would be more towards the center; I also thought since there was a bald eagle preying on them, that this was a way to confuse and maybe chase off the eagle; or maybe it was just a simple reshuffling of the flock since they did drift apart and this was a way to regroup. When they did take flight, unless a fowl was injured, there was not one waterfowl left on land or water. Whatever the reasons are, it certainly is a grand sight to see.
This, is a lot of bird power