Monday, October 6, 2008

Honk Honk ...

A familiar sight and sound to our ears this time of year are the flocks of geese migrating to their nesting grounds in the North. They love cold weather, to a certain degree, and they follow it. Such a beautiful, stately bird, they fly fairly low to the ground. They fly in many "V" formations, sometimes in numbers totaling 250,000. The lead bird in the "V" is constantly alternating so that it only has to endure the maximum wind pressure for a set period of time before the position is transferred to another bird. They follow the Great American Flyway which is basically the watershed of the Mississippi River and it's many tributaries, including the Missouri River Basin. They are vegans, they typically mate for life, and are incredibly protective of their young. But there is the occasional divorce and remarriage between them ... is nothing sacred ? LOL !

Photo from Wikipedia. Thank you.

5 comments:

  1. What a lovely photo, and a good piece about Canadian Geese. We see a lot of them, too, and it has confused me as to why they are flying north, while other birds (and retirees!) are flying south. God bless you and your family.

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  2. I love this. They are great looking birds and that fact that they "mostly" remain mated for life is a good thing.
    thanks for sharing.

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  3. Hello Keller !
    Very beautiful photo...
    And nice blog !
    I'll comme again...

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  4. Did you take this photo? Wow! I'd looove to catch on on film... lucky!

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  5. I have a funny photo. When my kids were little and we moved to the house we live in now, we went to a local park (on a large pond) that has a BIG population of geese.... these geese are used to being fed and have a big, shall we say, "Entitlement Complex".
    Well, my darling sweet 3 year old daughter S was toddling towards the water with a sack of bread in her fat little fist.... the geese quickly ascertained what it was and began CHASING her. As you can imagine, it was QUITE traumatic. She ran to, and ultimately CLIMBED my 6'5" husband like a TREE to get away from the marauding HERD of geese (and yes, they were a herd, at that point....)

    To this day, she's not crazy about geese.... :-)

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