The goose and swan migration in Traverse County the last few days was spectacular. I spent all day on Sunday and part of the day on Monday counting birds in flooded fields throughout the county, with totals as follows:
Tundra Swan: 9,655 Greater White-fronted Goose: 18,645 Snow Goose: 15,700 Rosss Goose: 638 Cackling Goose: 2,317 With Tuesday's shift to south winds, there was a mass exodus of geese from this area during the early morning: while standing at Mud Lake, I counted over 46,000 geese flying overhead, but because many of the flocks were distant, and because the flocks were often so large, I had to count many flocks by hundreds, and left some 20,300 geese unidentified. Nevertheless, during this flight I was able to identify 18,200 Greater White-fronted Geese, 5,600 Snow Geese, 2,100 Canada Geese, 300 Cackling Geese, and 18 Rosss Geese. Most of the flooded fields that held geese on Sunday and Monday were nearly empty of birds by Tuesday. The highlight of these three days was a single immature blue morph type Rosss Goose seen with a flock of 88 Rosss Geese (interestingly, this flock contained only 40 Snow Geese). Karl Bardon __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
