Snow Geese
A Great Swarm		March 2, 2009
 


The photo below shows snow geese in action at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, Pennsylvania, which is a key staging point for the spring migration of snow geese, and they arrive there in the tens of thousands. Over 80,000 geese were at Middle Creek that day. This is a detailed view of part of a swarm (or goosestorm).
 
Snow geese swirl
 

The snow geese rest on the water and the surrounding fields, and on Sunday around noon there appeared to be thousands of incoming geese. Occasionally, most of the geese take to the air while the newcomers and old hands resettle their positions in an immense swarm.

The swirl of geese looks totally chaotic (and the noise level is incredible), but there seems to be a pattern to it (that is, string theory might provide a better model for their swirling than chaos theory does).

Photo note: I used a Pentax *ist D, with the SMC-A* 300mm lens for this photo.



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