Canada Geese

While we were out chasing those Snowy Owls last week, we also saw lots of Canada Geese, as well as a huge flock of Snow Buntings.  I managed one series of shots of geese in one of the distant flooded fields we drove by.

I must have got the focus close, because these three geese are a heavily cropped small piece of a much larger photo.  Canada Geese are not one of my favourite birds, but I have to give them credit for being well adapted to surviving!

These are the geese, on a distance flooded field.

As we watched, one small group of geese decided they needed to stretch their wings.

Of course there was a lot of honking to go along with their flight past the trees in the background as they rose off the water.

Until they rose above the trees, and off they went into the sky.

Meanwhile, a great many more geese stayed resting on the water, all facing the same direction into the wind.

A few moments later we saw this enormous flock of Snow Buntings, several hundred at least.  We often see them picking grit off the winter roads, in small flocks of 20 or 30.  But obviously this flock is gathering to head north.  They breed in the high Arctic, but come south to winter all across Canada and into the northern United Stated.

As the Cornell Lab of Ornithology states on its website, "the mostly white plumage of a bunting flock evokes the image of a snowstorm", and that's exactly the impression we had as the birds swirled up and down, back and forth over the field.

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