We drove over to Henderson, KY to the Sauerheber Refuge, yesterday to see if the annual migration of Snow Geese had arrived.
Yep!.....there were a "few" there :-) This is one of the highlights of the birding year for me. There are 1000's of Snow Geese, Greater White-fronted Geese, and ducks that stop here every winter to spend a few months at this safe preserve. They seem to know exactly where the boundaries are and stay out of the hunter's fields.
This may look like a flock of starlings or other blackbirds, but in reality they are all geese. Large numbers of them decided to take to the air and change their location in the field while we were watching. What a sight it is to see this many geese in the air at once!
A distant shot to give the feel of the size of the swarm. I wish I could post these full size, but Blogger won't allow me to do that any more.
I did a lot of multi-shot rapid shooting and just let the birds stream by. Wow...what fun! (I took over 1000 photos before we left. I didn't even realize how many I was taking!)
I got a lot of landing shots that way and that is where my title comes from.
It looked like it was raining birds....they were "falling from the sky!
Actually they were just landing, but it just had that feel of birds floating down like rain (or snow :-)
Not too many close shots....they were too far away. But here are some of the mix....Snow Geese in both color patterns and White-fronted Geese.
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This refuge is part of a large Wildlife management area. A large number of acres along the road are protected from October to March from hunters, and 1000's of water fowl will spend the winter there. This is a wonderful place to visit if you are anywhere near enough to visit! Viewing is not always good depending on where the geese are hanging out, but sooner or later you find some of them in the flooded fields along the road, and there are some observation stands if you have really good camera equipment for long distances.
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This refuge is part of a large Wildlife management area. A large number of acres along the road are protected from October to March from hunters, and 1000's of water fowl will spend the winter there. This is a wonderful place to visit if you are anywhere near enough to visit! Viewing is not always good depending on where the geese are hanging out, but sooner or later you find some of them in the flooded fields along the road, and there are some observation stands if you have really good camera equipment for long distances.
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14 comments:
Wow Mary.... I'd love to see them.. Can't believe that there are so many... WOW--will they stay there in winter --or go farther south???? Awesome photos.
Hugs,
Betsy
This is really special! It must have been fun to be there and get all those pictures! I really like the pictures of them in the air! You got some good shots.
However could you pick which shots to post! What a fantastic experience and I am not at all surprised you went through more than 1,000 shots in one session.
Oh my .... I would definitely wear a HAT!! What a LOT of geese!!
What a sight that must have been. How exciting. I had no idea they came to Henderson, KY.
My goodness, what an experience Mary. I can only imagine the noise too. I have never seen so many in one place. Thanks for posting these great shots.
Thanks everyone! Henderson must be right at the northern tip of the area they go to for the winter. They usually hang around for several months. Maybe some of them go further south. This is a protected area of about 100 acres and they flood the fields and leave some crops standing for them to eat from. There are hunting camps surrounding the area however. You can only be on the paved public road that goes by the fields and hope that they have decided to hang out in the field that is closest. It's hard to get photos on the ground without really good equipment, but if they fly it's amazing!
Wow! I would fill up a memory card very quickly at this place. These pictures are amazing.
That second capture, showing the thousands and thousands of geese is something I can only dream of getting!! If I had been there, I would have taken about as many shots as you did! I have only ever seen the one snow goose, but I have seen lots of Canada geese (had you noticed)!!
...whoa! I want to go there. To see (and hear) so many geese in one spot is fantastic!
Oh, my, this would be fun to see! One of these days I am heading that way....right now I would even like to go to Goose Pond.
My My!!!! What a lot of geese! Great photos of them!
Wonderful shots! Even more than I saw! No wonder they are called snow geese, they are as thick as flakes in a snow storm!
As for your problem uploading photos, try re-sizing them. google has restrictions on megapixels. You can usually re-size them in your photo processing program. I use Microsoft Office pictures. Just got to the edit option and look for the re-size button. You must get them below 1000x800 megapixels. Then you will not use up your google storage. Make sure you save the file after you have re-sized it. Do not compress the photos as that will degrade the quality.
P.S. you can also re-size them in Picassa I think. I just never go there.
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