Very interesting. I once observed a very large flock of Canada geese descend from the skies, and approach a retention pond in a slow and very majestic corkscrew motion.
We used to have starling problems like this when I was a kid in Napa Valley. I don’t remember the flocks being quite that large but they exhibited the same behavior. As you can manage, it doesn’t take long for a flock of starlings to strip a vineyard of fruit.
During my five years in Rome I often saw great clouds of starlings behave this way. I also saw the mess such flocks leave behind…on trees, cars, pavements, and the heads of unwary tourists!
I was walking the Gray Lodge wildlife refuge two years ago beside a placid lake when suddenly ten thousand geese launched themselves simultaneously into the sky. All those beating wings sounded like a jet plane taking off, and I [url=http://resurrectiongulfcoast.blogspot.com/2007/11/briar-patch-dictionary.html]almost forgot I was carrying a camera[/url]
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When I was in school in Delaware, we were directly under the Atlantic flyway. I remember one day after cross-country practice watching a river of songbirds fly over for something like fifteen minutes.
Here’s another youtube video that provides a more closeup view of such behavior along with a narrated explanation of how these huge flocks of thousands starts out with many smaller flocks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-groCeKbE&feature=fvw
I just had the joy and privilege this weekend of visiting a bird sanctuary and national park near where I work in west Africa. We saw huge rivers of birds. It was awesome. We also saw hundreds each of Pelicans, Flamingos, Egrets, Cranes… just beautiful. And several families of Warthogs!
Br_er Rabbit, I love Gray Lodge and go there every year during migration season. It’s a lovely spot. Incidentally I have a friend who was a game warden there and she said starlings were the bane of her existence.
I often imagine what it must have been like before the Gold Rush. The first European explorers and settlers said there were so many birds in the wetlands of early California that they would darken the sky. There is nothing I love more at this time of year than to see and hear the flocks of geese heading south.
Very interesting. I once observed a very large flock of Canada geese descend from the skies, and approach a retention pond in a slow and very majestic corkscrew motion.
We used to have starling problems like this when I was a kid in Napa Valley. I don’t remember the flocks being quite that large but they exhibited the same behavior. As you can manage, it doesn’t take long for a flock of starlings to strip a vineyard of fruit.
During my five years in Rome I often saw great clouds of starlings behave this way. I also saw the mess such flocks leave behind…on trees, cars, pavements, and the heads of unwary tourists!
Mirabile visu!
What are the cues/communication that result in such coordinated movement in three dimensions?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocking_(behavior)
I was walking the Gray Lodge wildlife refuge two years ago beside a placid lake when suddenly ten thousand geese launched themselves simultaneously into the sky. All those beating wings sounded like a jet plane taking off, and I [url=http://resurrectiongulfcoast.blogspot.com/2007/11/briar-patch-dictionary.html]almost forgot I was carrying a camera[/url]
.
When I was in school in Delaware, we were directly under the Atlantic flyway. I remember one day after cross-country practice watching a river of songbirds fly over for something like fifteen minutes.
Here’s another youtube video that provides a more closeup view of such behavior along with a narrated explanation of how these huge flocks of thousands starts out with many smaller flocks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-groCeKbE&feature=fvw
I only counted 296,836.
Thanks, James. Could you count the geese in my photo for me?
11,294. : )
I just had the joy and privilege this weekend of visiting a bird sanctuary and national park near where I work in west Africa. We saw huge rivers of birds. It was awesome. We also saw hundreds each of Pelicans, Flamingos, Egrets, Cranes… just beautiful. And several families of Warthogs!
Now just imagine what a flock of passenger pigeons with billions of birds in them, 300 miles long looked like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon
Or a locust swarm covering an area the size of California:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_locust
(Both these species are now extinct.)
Br_er Rabbit, I love Gray Lodge and go there every year during migration season. It’s a lovely spot. Incidentally I have a friend who was a game warden there and she said starlings were the bane of her existence.
I often imagine what it must have been like before the Gold Rush. The first European explorers and settlers said there were so many birds in the wetlands of early California that they would darken the sky. There is nothing I love more at this time of year than to see and hear the flocks of geese heading south.
Reminds me of the A.M. Juster poem, “Stern Warning to Canada”-
If you want peace,
Remove your geese.