I get most of my wildlife news at the grocery store.
“Bears are out,” people say.
“Oh yeah?” someone replies.
“Yeah, someone saw a mama and two cubs over on the east side last week.”
Meanwhile I’m feeling the avocados to see if they will ripen within the next 10 days. Note to self though, time to start carrying bear spray again when I walk.
We live in prime grizzly bear habitat. In spring they come out of torpor (similar to hibernation but more like a deep sleep) from their dens in the mountains and wander down into the prairies in search of food.
Around here, we gossip about bears.
At the checkout, Calvin, the manager, tells me what may or may not be a joke.
“Do you know what Alaskans call Canadian geese?” he asks me.
“I don’t,” I say, wondering where this is going, and hoping nowhere bad.
“American geese.”
“Really,” I say, chuckling, wondering if I should internet check this later for accuracy, and then decide not to because I enjoy the idea of Alaskans talking about American geese too much to ruin it.
“Canadian geese,” or Canada geese as we call them, are here nearly year round. They loudly squawk and fly around the lake and feed on nearby farm fields. They have large brown bodies with a black head and neck marked by a white chin strap.
I like to think of them as the tanker aircraft of birds. They fly slowly, with purpose, in a strong vee.
Snow geese, on the other hand, are like fighter jets. They are light and fast and watching them fly over our house to the lake takes my breath away.
“They’re here again!” calls Doug, and we walk outside, craning our necks as thousands of them fly by overhead.
Neighbors and friends say the same thing. “Look up! Did you see them?”
We all are enthralled.
Snow geese are distinctive. They have pure white bodies with black and gray tipped wings. Our lake, Lake Frances, is a stopover for them on their migration back from wintering in California on their way to northern Canada, or even in Siberia, where they breed.
We have thousands, probably hundreds of thousands here. Another nearby lake that is managed by Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks will see up to 300,000 a season and 10,000 tundra swans.
When they lift off in flight from the lake en masse they are so large a group that they can blot out the mountains behind them.
I made you a short video of them to show you.
Nature is still astounding.
The Beauty of the Snow Geese Migration