Had one of the most enjoyable bird days of my life yesterday, 3/23. Spent the day in western Minnesota with Ron Erpelding and hit a goose migration I didn't think was possible in this state.
Estimates: White geese: snow/blue, Ross'- 110,000 White fronted- 35,000 Canada- 20,000 If you think these numbers are impressive, consider we did not really put on many miles "looking to count." Ron is a county lister, so we spent time at each stop sorting through birds. Ron sorted as I did my best to count. But then, how do you count a flock of 25,000+ white geese, which we had at least 3 times. Mud Lake in Traverse county had impressive numbers of both white geese and white fronted, but we saw equally large concentrations north of there into Wilkin county (and excellent numbers of birds in Grant, Stevens, and Big Stone counties.) Because white goose hunting season is currently open, I would rather not divulge exact locations on "the net." There were many times during the day, the sky was absolutely full of geese, scores of flocks with some flocks over 1500 birds. (I differentiate between flocks and "swarms." Interestingly the white geese were swarming but not migrating...20,000 birds would get up circle around and land again in the same general area. Where as we would see large lines/flocks/skeins of white fronteds in formations heading north.) An interesting thought...even if my counting was pathetic and I grossly over-counted (which I didn't), if one assumes we saw 10% of the geese in Western Minnesota yesterday, that easily puts the bird numbers over 1 million. But the reality is, we really only spent time in 4 counties, and only got a few miles into both Wilkin and Big Stone. So, IF the goose numbers were any where near what we saw in the north and south ends of the state, there was easily several million geese in western Minnesota yesterday. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, the birds were unbelievable, and the company was...well, you can't have everything (just kidding, Ron). A day and experience I may never equal. P.S. If anyone else was at Mud Lake yesterday, I would be interested in knowing the number of birds you estimated there. Randy Frederickson Willmar
