Pintails and Blue Geese

     I have never seen so many northern pintail ducks and blue geese as I have in February of 2020 at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge near the Chesapeake Bay on Maryland's Eastern Shore.  Pintails and snow geese have traditionally wintered in shallows of the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays.  There they feed on aquatic vegetation, grasses in salt marshes and corn kernels in fields.  But both species, and Canada geese mallard ducks and tundra swans, adapted to wintering on the shallow retention basins at Blackwater and other wildlife refuges along those two estuaries. 
     Every day in February of this year, I watched great flocks of snow geese, many of them the dark color phase called blue geese, swirl down together onto those retention basins like a blizzard of snow, after feeding in nearby fields and marshes.  As the geese settled on those freshwater basins, they formed an island of white and dark birds on the water that grew larger and larger as more and more geese spiraled down.
     I had been watching those pintails and both color phases of snow geese through February on our computer screen as transmitted by a live camera mounted on a causeway between the two retention basins.  That camera made me feel as though I was standing, in person, on that causeway.
     The large numbers of pintails at Blackwater were impressing.  Handsome and streamlined, each male pintail has two long tail fathers that give this species its name, and helps identify the kind of duck it is.  Female pintails, however, are brown with darker streaking, and have no long tail feathers.  But the hens' blending into their habitats keeps them safer from predators while brooding eggs and raising ducklings.   
     Northern pintails' courtship flights in late winter and early spring are their most interesting activity, which I witnessed at Blackwater many times.  Three to five males would gather around a hen pintail on the water and show off before her.  Soon the female pintail took flight, with all the drakes swiftly following her.  The male who keeps up with the racing hen the best will be her mate for the coming breeding season.  Hen pintails hatch ducklings in grassy nests on the ground around ponds and marshes in the prairies of Central United States and Canada. 
     Tens of thousands of snow geese of both colors dominated the twin retention basins at Blackwater.  And I was surprised to see so many blue geese in those constantly, excitedly honking masses of them landing on the basins.  Blue geese are regularly abundant in the Mississippi River flyway in winter, but not along the East Coast. 
     Blackwater's retention basins are often full of waterfowl in winter and early spring, including feeding tundra swans and Northern pintails, and resting Canada geese and snow geese.  Snow geese are well-named because many of them are all-white with black wing tips, they feed in snow and they are in the United States in winter. 
     But to people with limited knowledge about snow geese, there seems to be several kinds of geese in a snow goose flock.  Adult snow geese are white with black wing tips.  Immature snow geese have white and gray feathers.  Adult blue geese are dark-gray with white heads and necks.  Snow geese that had one white parent and one dark parent are dark with white heads, necks and bellies.  And immature blue geese are dark all over.  Snow geese might appear to be several different kinds of geese, but they are all one species. 
     I was impressed and entertained by the numbers and activities of Northern pintails and blue geese at Blackwater Refuge last month.  There is always something new and intriguing going on in nature.