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DAILY PROMPT
Countless
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This story is about the magnificent Snow Goose that now abounds in countless numbers. If you are fortunate enough to live in the United States along the Mississippi or the Missouri flyway. The airspace that the ducks and geese use to fly between their winter and summer areas. At one time Snow Geese were diminishing in numbers, hunting seasons were even closed for them. Today the Snow Goose has returned in countless numbers. So many they threaten to destroy their own nesting grounds. As they travel through these flyway’s both spring and fall anyone who has the privilege to witness this migration will have a memory that they will never forget.

When the migration is at it’s peak, there are times when the geese are so thick they can almost block out the sun. They will cover thousands of acres of farmland cleaning up what is left over from the farmers harvest. They do all of this in a very short matter of time. They need to put on some fat to finish their trip north to the Arctic Circle. They are committed to making nests, laying and hatching eggs emmediately upon arrival. Many of them will nest near or at the Arctic Circle. A land of limited vegetation, they are eating everything in site to feed their young.

While the Snow Geese are spending their time building up their bodies here in the Midwestern part of the United States. The sound of them is almost deafening, if you are close. Any time a flock is scared by something and it gets up. They all seem to join in the chorus. It is truly the loudest chorus you will ever hear on this earth.. Countless birds, some in the air, some on the ground and some covering the water. As I said, “we are fortunate to witness such a magnificent event of nature.”

“They fly quickly and at high altitudes in narrow flight lanes, heading more or less due south from the breeding grounds to a wintering site at roughly the same longitude. Some Snow Geese that winter in western North America breed in Siberia, and some that winter along the Atlantic coast breed in Greenland. Snow Geese breed in colonies on Canadian and Northern Alaskan tundra in the vicinity of the coast, from the high arctic to the subarctic.”

“Watching huge flocks of Snow Geese swirl down from the sky, amid a cacophony of honking, is a little like standing inside a snow globe. These loud, white-and-black geese can cover the ground in a snowy blanket as they eat their way across fallow cornfields or wetlands. Among them, you might see a dark form with a white head—a color variant called the “Blue Goose.” Snow Geese have skyrocketed in numbers and are now among the most abundant waterfowl on the continent.”

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