“Winter Geese, Winter Pond” — Migratory geese (including Rosss, snow, and cackling geese) settle in a California Central Valley pond as a weather front approaches.
On the best winter days, migratory birds gather by the hundreds of thousands (millions?) up and down California’s Central Valley, especially where the winter wetland ponds form. I first became vaguely aware of this decades ago on a winter drive up the Sacramento Valley on my way to Washington, when for the first time I saw multitudes of birds in the winter sky. Later a chance comment by a friend led me to a location in the delta where birds gather by thousands. Since then, I’ve been addicted to experiencing and photographing this annual wonder.
I made this photograph on a cloudy morning. The cloud shield overhead extended to the edge of the Sierra, which meant we had a brief but brilliant sunrise above the mountains. Then everything went mostly gray and hazy, and the light turned soft. These geese — largely a mixture of Ross’s, snow, and white-fronted — settled into a pond where I paused.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
A flock of airborne Aleutian cackling geese accompanied by a solitary interloper.
This post may (or may not…) be more about the birds than about the photography, but I’ll leave the final judgment to readers. Later in the migratory bird season (e.g. “winter”) in California the birds seem to become more active, and I see more of them in large, mixed groups. I’ve mentioned before that I once imagined that all the winter migrators were “geese,” only to eventually learn about others. Eventually it dawned on me that not all geese are just geese and that they come it a great variety. (Photographing with someone who know a lot about these critters helped me begin to learn these things.)
This is a flock of Aleutian cackling geese, a type that I identify by looking for their dark coloration, lack of a particular banding pattern on their chests (more on this in a moment), and the white areas under their “chins” and at the base of their black necks. There is a fascinating story about the recovery of this type of goose, whose total population was once down to a few hundred individuals but which now numbers in six figures. But look more closely and you may be able to spot one interloper here, a goose of a different sort. (Hint: one white-fronted goose has joined this aerial party.)
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
A cloud of geese takes flight over wetlands in dawn light
Today’s post begins with a confession: I can’t resist raising the camera and photographing when these gigantic flocks of migratory geese take to the air above these wetland landscapes. I’ve seen this happen perhaps thousands of times now, but the visual and auditory tumult is remains irresistible. So I photograph. Even knowing that I have hundreds of photographs of similar events in my archives. What can I say?
If you are looking for something a bit out of the ordinary or special in this image, allow me to help. You may notice that not all the geese are white. In fact, I’m certain that at least four different types of migratory geese appear in this photograph. The white geese are likely mostly snow geese, but I think there are some Ross’s geese in the mix, too. The darker geese in the airborne flock appear to be Aleutian cackling geese – the subject of an amazing species recovery. Down on the water and difficult to make out are the ubiquitous white-fronted geese. (I imagine one of them looking over to a buddy, “Hey, what are those guys so upset about?” while floating placidly in the pond.) The light is a bit unusual. There was no thick fog here, but there were low clouds to the east, and they muted the light — though a bit of reddish sunrise light is coloring the white geese in the airborne flock.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
During the past few years I have become a big fan of photographing migratory birds in California’s Central Valley, and now that summer is over I’m anxious to get back out there and get to work on this year’s bird photographs. Actually, we made our first bird photography trip out there about a week ago, on the first weekend in November. Our main goal was to find sandhill cranes, since we knew they were here already, but we were also interested in seeing what else might have showed up.
In keeping with my new policy of posting multiple photographs in a single message when I have too many photographs waiting in the queue, this post includes five bird photographs. Enjoy!
Late in the morning, long after the morning fly out, we were poking around on some rural backroads when we found a lot of sandhill cranes in dormant fields in thinning morning fog. This group thoughtfully posed for me with a distant pair of trees on the horizon.
Three sandhill cranes stand in a dormant Central Valley, California field
I photographed this group in much the same location as those in the previous photograph. While the cranes seem to collect in large groups near water in the evening and early morning, during the day they are often found more spread out in agricultural areas like this one.
Sandhill cranes land on a Central Valley pond during the evening fly-in
In the evening the cranes do a “fly-in” – where large numbers of them land together in areas around water. When we arrived at this small observation area an hour or so before sunset, there were many birds but no cranes. However, I’ve learned that the sandhill cranes often arrive late, frequently after sunset and sometime when it is becoming rather dark. (One of our most memorable migratory bird encounters occurred at another refuge further south in the valley. We had a great day of photographing birds, beginning very early in the morning and continuing through sunset. As the sun set the bird action began to diminish and it became quite dark. It had been a long, successful day, and we were happy to be finished with this shoot. We were just putting gear away when we began to hear a huge chorus of the easily recognized sound of sandhill cranes coming from out of sight to the southeast. A moment later the sky was filled with the birds – I’ve never seen so many cranes together since then.)
Here the birds began to arrive just a bit earlier. The first groups landed a good distance off, but soon a single large crane settled in on this dry area in front of us and began to produce very large calls, as if to say, “come on down and stop here!” Before long other birds did just that. Here the slow shutter speed allows the winds of the landing birds to blur a bit.
A small group of cackling geese in flight against blue sky over California Central Valley agricultural lands
I have a confession to make, and it is a little embarrassing for a person who is as enthusiastic about photographing birds as I am. Basically, I’m not very good at identifying birds, or at least not good at naming them! (This is an “issue” I’ve always had, and not just with birds. I’m so familiar with certain wild plants that I can tell you exactly what they look like in the wet and dry seasons, when the flowers will appear, and when to find them… but I often cannot name them.) I’m always happy when I can photograph with someone who is better than I at this.
I’m pretty certain these are geese! (Good so far?) I used to think that geese that looked like this were Canadian geese, but when I tried to find photos of these birds online to determine what they were, I kept coming up with “cackling geese.” To make things more confusing – at least for me – I understand that the differences between some Canadian geese and some cackling geese can confuse even the experts. Judging by the size and shape of the bill, the size of the birds, and the pattern and color of feathers, I’m going with this identification until someone shows me differently!
Sandhill cranes settle in to a Central Valley pond during the evening fly-in
This is the same group seen in a photograph earlier in this post, with this photograph being made a bit earlier – clearly the case as there are fewer birds on the ground in this shot, and the color of the sky is less intense. If you look closely about a third of the way in from the left edge of the frame, you may be able to see the larger bird that landed first and was then followed by other later arrivals.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
