Be sure to check out our Adventure Journal this week — we had the dubious honor of rescuing a baby cow from Certain Death by Train.
Yesterday we saw a strange sight. We were driving home in a northernly direction, when we saw a long formation of Canada Geese flying alongside us.
Soon they were flying directly overhead, quite close to the ground, and we clocked them at an even 45 mph. After about a mile, the majority of the geese banked hard to the north-west, while three geese banked hard to the north-east. We didn’t get the impression that they were planning on re-grouping.
The oddest thing was that this is well past the time when we tend to see geese flying northward. They are very familiar in early spring, flying by in great noisy V-formations. But what was this odd migration we were witnessing?
A bit of research suggests that we might have seen a ‘moult migration’. This is performed by geese who won’t be breeding, and they travel far north of normal goose territory in order to find wide-open waters where they can relax for about five weeks while they replace their worn-out flight feathers. Judging by the ragged-looking feathers some of them were sporting, this theory makes sense. Please weigh in if you know whether our hunch is correct!
Posted on May 26th, 2009 by Rebecca Whitman
Filed under: Birds
Whew! Great story about poor lil Lone Cow… hysterical! Glad it ended well.
Never heard of a “moult migration”– thanks!
Hello Sally! It was a fun adventure =) And this ‘moult migration’ is totally new to us, as well. It took us quite by surprise to see geese flying at this time of year!