Every late winter and early spring, snow geese, tundra swans, Canada geese, common mergansers and black ducks, in that arbitrary order of abundance at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in southeastern Pennsylvania, create great, noisy spectacles. These species have the annual habit of settling at Middle Creek's 400 acre mitigated lake and other, smaller human-made impoundments to feed and wait for spring to catch up to their restless urges to migrate north to their nesting grounds. They generally arrive at Middle Creek in abundance sometime in February, depending upon the weather and leave for destinations north sometime in March, again depending on the weather.
I went to Middle Creek four times this year between February 3 and February 14, for a couple of hours each trip, to see the great, annual congregation of waterfowl. It was early this year because of a mild winter that made the birds restless earlier than usual. Of all the waterfowl at Middle Creek, the ever-restless snow geese present the biggest, most exciting annual show. Many tens of thousands of them always congregate in a dense, white "raft" on the back part of the main lake, making me think they are the same birds and their young each year. Many times a seemingly endless parade of incoming flocks of snows join their relatives in that raft, making it larger and larger, and noisier and noisier with their constant honking. The incoming snow geese could be coming back from feeding in harvested corn fields or winter rye fields, or are just arriving from farther south. Each tight, airborne group of snows slides across the sky like a wave up a beach, circles the raft of snows on the water, or ice, on the lake a few times, then swings into the wind, with each bird's wings set like a parachute, and float gently down to the water, all without collision among their fellows. Occasionally the whole raft of many thousands of snow geese lift from the water at once with a roar of beating wings and voices, like a sheet being lifted from a bed, in sequence, from one end to the other. The background disappears behind that dense cloud of yelling snow geese, as it would behind a blizzard. The geese circle the impoundment several times, then finally settle on it again. And all that, amazingly, without collision with their flock mates.
Tundra swans live and travel in small, loose groups of a half dozen birds to 20 or more. But those big, elegant birds create beautiful spectacles, in the air, in harvested corn fields and rye fields, and on water, sometimes all that at once at Middle Creek, as elsewhere. These majestic, white birds mingle well with the gray-brown Canada geese and the dark black ducks, making lovely gatherings of these kinds of waterfowl.
Tundra swans are called that because they, and snow geese, nest on the Arctic tundra of Canada and Alaska. And these swans have a characteristic, melodious, whooping call that is pretty and heard from a bit of a distance.
The up to 5,000 migrant swans at Middle Creek mostly gather in a cove of the big lake, along the main road where they can be seen at close quarters. But this species is also scattered all around that impoundment in pairs and little groups. Like the snow geese, because these swans have the same habits at Middle Creek each year, I think they are the same birds and their young year after year. The snows and swans are like old friends visiting as they travel.
The familiar, permanent resident Canada geese, and their migrant relatives, in flocks of their own, are scattered across the main lake, other ponds and the land surrounding all those impoundments. Like snows and swans, Canadas rest on water, but feed in corn fields and winter rye fields. And, although Canada geese are common, everyday waterfowl in this area, I never tire of seeing their beauty and charm, or hearing their loud, bugling calls.
Each winter and early spring, as long as the main lake is at least partly ice-free at Middle Creek, scores of common merganser ducks bob on the water and dive under it from the surface to catch small fish. The fish that are left have more room and food to grow larger.
Common mergansers are handsome ducks. Drakes are white with dark backs and upper wings, with heads that shine green in the sunlight and red beaks shaped to catch small fish. Hens have gray body feathering and brown heads, and each one has a crest that looks like a bad hair day.
A few other kinds of ducks winter at Middle Creek, including a limited number each of mallards, gadwalls, ring-necked ducks and black ducks. Black ducks are the most common of those duck species in winter and early spring. Big and dark on water or ice, black ducks are readily noticeable from shores around Middle Creek's impoundments. And black ducks join geese and swans in corn fields to shovel up waste corn kernels.
Every winter and early spring, at least a few bald eagles and, sometimes, a golden eagle, inhabit
Middle Creek. Those eagles are often spotted soaring majestically over the land and water. Sometimes the eagles of both species harass the snow geese, which fly up at once in a great, deafening mass from the main lake. Sometimes I see an eagle eating a snow goose, but I've never seen one kill a goose.
Middle Creek is a place to see sensational hordes of geese and swans from sometime in February to some point of time in March. They may stay at Middle Creek for a few weeks, daily feeding in nearby fields and resting on the 400 acre lake there. But when spring catches up to their restless hormones, the snows and swans migrate to the Great lakes area, and then on through Canada, bit by bit, to the treeless Arctic tundra where they hatch young. They arrive on the tundra around the middle of May, are already paired, begin to set on clutches of eggs by the end of that month and the fuzzy offspring hatch around the end of June. The young grow quickly and by early October, both snows and swans, and their young of the year, come south again to the Chesapeake Bay Region and farther south for the winter. And late in winter, into early spring, they start to work their way north again, and arriving at Middle Creek for another year.
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