About 6:00 pm during many evenings in March, great waves of snow geese pour over the 400 acre lake at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, close to where I live in southeastern Pennsylvania. Having finished feeding on corn kernels in harvested corn fields and green blades of winter rye, many long, wavering skeins of snows advance across the sky, one after another, often as far back in the sky as the eye can see. Each fast-flying flock of geese comes to the lake like a wave sliding up a beach, with many geese honking shrilly at once, creating a clamor of voices. Snow goose hordes circle the lake a few times, honking loudly, then descend like thousands of feathered parachutes to the water, or ice, on that impoundment where they rest, preen their feathers and socialize until hungry again.
Snow geese, and sandhill cranes in the mid-west of the United States, engage in massive migrations in March, creating exciting, inspiring, near-spiritual events that are enjoyed by thousands of people every year. Hundreds of thousands of each species are heading north to raise young, the geese in the Arctic tundra where some of them, and their eggs and young, are preyed on by polar bears, Arctic foxes and Inuits. Most cranes go to open country in Alaska and western Canada.
A hundred-thousand snow geese, on average, have been stopping at Middle Creek's lake, and surrounding fields, from the middle of February to mid-March, in the last several years. They spend winter around the Chesapeake and Delaware Bay areas and coastal New Jersey where they feed in fields and on grasses in salt marshes. But in February and March their restless hormones push them to start their long migration north. Snow geese at Middle Creek develop a daily routine of leaving the impoundment, enmasse, at sunrise to feed in fields and coming back to the lake at sunset to rest for the night. This routine, however, is variable. But when their great masses are in the air at sunrise and at sunset, they are strikingly, wonderfully silhouetted!
Noted as the greatest spring migration in North America, thousands of snow geese, and up to 600,000 sandhill cranes that wintered in Texas, New Mexico, southeastern Arizona and Mexico, bottleneck a few weeks or more on the shallow strands and mud flats of the Platte River in the prairie of south-central Nebraska. The cranes stand resting overnight in the shallows and on the flats, and take off by the thousands, in many waves, one after another and another, for fields of corn kernels in harvested corn fields at sunrise.
Like the snow geese, those early-morning cranes filling the sky with their huge numbers and rolling, one-second trills are beautifully silhouetted before the sunrise. The many crane gatherings circle the feeding fields a few times. Eventually, each bird floats down like a feathered parachute, with long legs extended for impact, to the golden corn stubble. There the crane masses ingest corn kernels among the stubble for most of the day.
At sunset, wave after wave of silhouetted masses of sandhill cranes power back to the Platte to spend the night, again amid a clamor of crane voices that seems to shatter the air and our ear drums.
Each time each group passes over the Platte, some cranes drop out of it like huge, feathered rain drops and land in the shallow water or on a mud flat. After several low passes of the river, each great gathering of cranes is on the river for the night.
About eighty percent of north-bound sandhill cranes spend part of each spring in the Platte River area of southcentral Nebraska, particularly in March. They are striking birds, up to four feet tall with a wing span of six to seven feet. They have long legs, necks and beaks for getting food. They are mostly light-gray with red foreheads. And they must run a bit into the wind to take off in flight. In flight, their necks and legs stretch out from their bodies.
Cranes are "Lords of the Dance". Each courting crane lowers its long neck, then springs up or kicks its lengthy legs forward.
The great masses of beautiful and migrating snow geese and sandhill cranes in spring are more than enjoyment to many of us: They are a gift from God. At least wildlife always gives me enjoyment, excitement, inspiration, peace and hope for a bright future.
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