Out hunting snow geese this weekend, with a camera of course!! Had missed out for the last couple of weeks but this week was the jackpot!!
I was talking to my brother that lives in northern Saskatchewan a week ago and he said they had lots of snow geese on the farmers fields. Well I had been out driving around for the last two weeks looking for them around Lethbridge and I had no success. A couple nights in the last week I could hear them calling around 10 pm but it was so dark that I had no hope of seeing the flock fly past.
Road trip!
So this past Saturday I headed out to one of my favorite lakes for seeing waterfowl. , Horsefly Lake is south of Taber Alberta and it is a favorite migration stop over in the spring and fall. As I drove east I knew that there was a good chance of seeing something at the lake. South of the McCain Foods plant at Chin Alberta two fields were full of snow geese. When I arrived at Horsefly lake I was VERY disappointed. I only saw a very small group of geese, not even enough to really say that it was a flock. As I was driving around the lake the sky darkened to the south of me as thousands of geese took flight to leave their feeding ground and move to the lake for the day.
Snow Geese Erupt!!
Snow Geese are amazing birds. One thing that is so amazing is the noise that they make. Their calls are so loud that it makes an Imax movie seem like it is on mute. The other thing that is so amazing is that they usually fly as a massive flock. If one takes off 100 follow. If 100 go then 1000 will follow. Within minutes flocks from all around the lake had lifted to the sky and aimed themselves to Horsefly lake. The sky exploded with birds, flapping wings and their calls. When the entire sky is full of birds it is hard to show it in one picture.
Side Tracked
Yes I have a short attention span. As the skies were filling with snow geese I was attracted to the other birds around and in the lake. A hawk soared towards me looking for some lunch and that was more than I could stand. It would hover above me checking out the field I was in and I was distracted. I had to take its picture!!
As soon as I took the hawks picture I spotted some Tundra swans and had to take their picture as well.
SNOW GEESE SNOW STORM!
Well once I was done with the distractions it was back to the Snow Geese. The lake filled up REALLY fast. Geese arrived from all directions. Soon the noise from the lake was deafening.
