Tag Archives: flock

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Snow Geese in Flight

January 17, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of snow geese takes to the air above the Sacramento Valley

Occasionally during idle moments out photographing birds, when not much else is on my mind, I try to imagine what it might be like to be one of them, to live their very different lives, especially among the migratory flocking birds like geese. (Yes, I recognize that much of their lives would seem very, very unromantic and even brutal.) One of the most difficult and interesting things to try to imagine, given that it is so far out of our own experience, is what it might be like to be airborne among so many other birds.

One of the special moments that comes when photographing the migratory geese is when something triggers them to all take to the air at once in huge groups that may number in the thousands — maelstroms of wings and sound and flight. When this happens we often simply point our cameras in that direction and begin photographing almost mindlessly. (In the best circumstances, it isn’t quite so mindless, and we pay attention to things like the background landscape and the light as this happens.) Often these lift-offs happen at a distance, but when it is closer the effect is even wilder. On this morning I was fortunate to have a viewing position that was very close to the place where the birds had settled in, and when the inevitable wild liftoff came, it was about as close as I have experienced, and I was able to photograph straight through the rising flock, from very close birds to those already farther up in the air.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Geese, Morning

January 10, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A huge flock of geese settled in under San Joaquin Valley dawn sky

Arriving near here before dawn on New Year’s Day 2016, our little group was a bit surprised to hear very few birds. Typically they are the first thing we notice when we get out of our vehicles — many thousands of birds raucously greeting the dawn. But on this morning there were almost no bird sounds at all. There was a rumor of geese nearby along a country road, so some of us headed that direction, and we did find a modest sized group of birds there. It wasn’t an astonishing number, but it least there were some.

Settling in to wait for dawn and perhaps more birds, things were fairly quiet. But before long more geese began to fly in, arriving in groups from the south and settling in on the ponds. In this place that can often be extremely foggy, the fog was thinner on this morning, and the hazy dawn light filtered through to shine on the water and silhouette the trees.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Goose-Filled Dawn Sky

January 5, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Geese fill the winter dawn sky above a San Joaquin Valley marsh

This is another photograph from our New Year’s Day visit to the migratory birds of California’s San Joaquin Valley. A group of us, photographers and painters and friends, made a rendezvous in the pre-dawn darkness. We were surprised to hear almost no birds in this place, where more typically we are greeted by the sounds of many thousands of them as soon as we get out of our cars. Eventually we found geese at a nearby set of ponds along the roadway.

The number of geese seemed to have diminished since my last visit a few weeks earlier, but before long groups of them began to arrive, mostly flying in from a southerly direction before setting down on the ponds. Eventually the crowd reached a more typical size, with thousands of the birds in a large flock. And, predictably, at some point something set them off, and almost all of them took to the air at once, in a swirling cloud of honking and squawking, and they flew a few circles above the ponds before heading off to more distant points.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Dawn, New Year’s Day 2016

January 3, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Geese in flight above a rural San Joaquin Valley road at dawn, New Year’s Day 2016

A few years back a group of friends decided to meet at dawn on New Year’s Day. We arrived at a place out in the San Joaquin Valley that is mostly populated by migratory birds this time of year, and we greeted the first sunrise of the new year with friends — a few human friends and a few tens of thousands of geese and other birds. We repeated the event the following year, and it has now become a traditions. Today we can’t think of a better way to start a new year, and once again we assembled there on New Year’s Day 2016.

We arrived to find the place strangely quiet. Typically we expect to hear thousands of birds all around us, but we figured out that they had moved off to nearby ponds. A few of us headed that way and eventually others followed, and we found a decent group of geese settled in on the shallow water. As the sun rose thousands more geese began to fly in, and before long the ponds were filled with them. Inevitably, something causes them to suddenly take to the air and before long that is exactly what happened. The flock noisily took flight, made a few loops over the pond, and then headed north over the rural roadway, silhouetted against sunrise sky.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: flock

Snow Geese in Flight

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Geese, Morning

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Goose-Filled Dawn Sky

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Dawn, New Year’s Day 2016

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.