Ross’s Geese, Winter Sky. Merced National Wildlife Refuge. February 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A group of Ross’s geese in flight against a winter sky above California’s Central Valley.
I may have mentioned before that I’m not the world best namer of things – I struggle with identification of both flora and fauna, at least beyond the most obvious stuff. This is somewhat odd, since I often recall and recognize in great detail the specific characteristics of things. For example, while I’ve never been able to consistently remember the names of certain wildflowers, I’m very familiar with them and can tell you exactly where to find the plants, when they bloom, and so forth. This is all my preamble to saying that I’m pretty sure these are Ross’s Geese, but that I make no guarantees! From a bit of reading and viewing I did before posting, I found out that telling the Ross’s Goose apart from the Snow Goose is not an easy thing. Some of the differences are more of degree than anything else – one is a bit larger and has a bit larger wingspan. Others are subtle, for example the head shapes. Some or more obvious, such as the presence or not of a certain pattern on the side of the bill. (I now know that some other birds that I had not identified earlier on must be Snow Geese… since I now recall seeing that very pattern and wondering about it.)
Anyway… when we visited the Merced National Wildlife Refuge on an early February evening we got lucky and found a huge mass of these birds (and others) in a location that was fairly close to the places from which viewing was possible. To give you an idea of how many birds there were, when we first arrived we noticed groups of a few hundred lifting off and flying away and began to worry that we might miss the show – but it turned out that a few hundred departures, repeated many times over, did not diminish the apparent size of the monumental group of birds at all!
For me, and I suspect for most who photograph these birds, the “hit rate” is something considerably short of 100%. If I have to wait long enough for birds to fly over, eventually I get impatient and start shooting groups that are really too far away to make good photos. Others look like they are heading my direction, so I compose and start shooting, only to watch them veer off to the side. Others approach close enough but they end up against bright sky and little or no detail is visible in the shot. Others come close but assume odd positions that don’t make impressive photographs, or they may even come too close to photograph! But eventually, something good happens. This group came close, flew towards me, and within shooting distance not only turned to present great profiles but even lined up in such a way that the low sun caught their undersides and filled in what might have been silhouettes otherwise.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.