Early Morning Flight
What a spectacle to witness! My mother-in-law has been telling me about the snow geese migration at Middle Creek for years. But I could never make time to go see them because their migration coincided with the end of our sales quarter - dumb geese have poor timing! With my new freedom of retirement and no commitments other than what I want to do, I decided to go see what it was all about. I was amazed!
I left the house at 5am to arrive at sunrise on a Tuesday... thinking there might only be about five of us there... wrong! The place was packed... and not just with geese! As I got out of the car, I heard it... a constant roar in the distance that guided me to where the action was. There were a hundred thousand snow geese roosting on a lake at sunrise. And even though I heard about it and researched it online, nothing prepares you for the instant fifty thousand snow geese take off in a swirl of white and black - the constant roar becomes louder and rises and falls as the geese take flight - almost sounding like the roar of a jet engine. It was truly something to see and feel.
It was so amazing, I decided to rent a longer, super telephoto lens from my local camera shop and go back the next morning. This time I would be smarter and leave at 4:15am and get there before anyone else... wrong again! But at least I got a spot in the parking lot and nabbed the last prime camera position. I watched a beautiful sunrise on a warm March morning... not exactly peaceful or quiet... with a hundred thousand of my closest geese friends, and about hundred photographers and nature lovers there with me too.
The image above is my favorite of the two days I was at Middle Creek. I like the color and light with just a few geese - it's more of a landscape photo that happens to have snow geese in it. To see what it looks like with thousands of geese in the air, click on this link to my website story.
If you live near one of the stopovers on the migration route, east coast or west coast, it is well worth getting up early just to be there and see it and feel it.