I'm enthralled in the grip of my sixth westward odyssey, driving to the promised land of Joshua Tree National Park, where I intend once more to don my ranger stetson early next week.
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| New Crown Point Bridge, November 2011, photo from Vermont Public Radio website |
A little while earlier, I'd stopped to devour a turkey sandwich - leftovers from our early Thanksgiving celebration the previous day - at Dead Creek in Addison, Vermont, a place famous for migrating flocks of geese. Sure enough, snow geese, large, pure white birds with distinctive black wing tips, were gathering in a small flock on the wetland, and their gentle syncopated honking echoed around the valley, bouncing off the slopes of Snake Mountain, which affords such a spectacular view of the Lake.
The geese, I suppose, have an ever better view from the air. The flock was growing: every 30 seconds or so, as I watched, a few more geese would circle in from the west, adjust their speed and trajectory and gently settle onto the marshy ground among their waiting companions. The favored aerial approach was in a north-south direction, putting their tails toward me and the other bird watchers, as they landed. Most of the birds simply positioned themselves and glided, undercarriage dropped, to disappear into the growing flock: others, usually two or three at a time, displayed last-minute acrobatics, perhaps playing, perhaps competing with one another, executing brief final sideways flips and curving swoops before being absorbed by the flock.
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| Growing snow goose flock at Dead Creek |
November 14 seemed a little late in the season for snow geese to be just gathering here. Why were they so late? Then I realized: all the arriving birds were coming from the west! They, too, had been waiting for the bridge to be re-opened!
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