Watching Birds Instead of Eating Them

I have been doing quite a bit of bird watching lately, which I am really enjoying. We are in the midst of a monitoring project for wild wintering geese. The flocks or literally thousands of geese are really very impressive. Our monitoring project focuses on counting the geese as they fly over (we count by 10's, or sometimes just plain estimate), noting locations and times that the flock settles to feed and searching for the endangered red breasted goose in the midst of mostly white-fronted geese. There are a number of larger greylag geese in the flock as well.

Here is a shot of my counterpart, Emil, looking for red-breasted geese amongst the flock last Satuday.

The goose monitoring is an important project, as it will help determine the management plan for this particular protected area. Counting birds, it turns out, is not quite as simple as one-two-three. The geese come in such thick numbers that the one by one approach is impossible. I usually count by 10's or so, but sometimes even that is difficult. Also, if we set up our equipment in one particular area, oftentimes the geese may decide to land in a different field from the expected one. "Ah, the geese have surprised us again!" says my counterpart.

Call me touchy feely, or a nature freak if you like, but I not-so-secretly enjoy when the geese are unpredictable. I draw great comfort from the fact that there are still wild creatures in this world who do not always behave as we expect or desire them to. I understand the importance of getting numbers for our study, but would be very sad if nature always "cooperated" with us. This morning, for example, we went to the field to attempt to look for red-breasted geese. As you can see from this photo of two of our young volunteers, the weather prohibitted looking at anything further away than about 20 meters.

Despite not being able to see, hearing the geese break the frosty silence as they flew low through the fog in ever increasing numbers was a truly magical experience. We stood there listening to the honking and even the swoosh of air through their wings. And every once in a while, we would catch a glimpse, if only for a few seconds.