Video: A ‘powerful storm’ of snow geese begins heading for the Arctic

Bird watchers gather to share in one of nature’s most spectacular spectacles: a “blizzard” of snow geese flying over a Pennsylvania lake.

It is as if they are gathered in the darkness of the morning, waiting for the time when thousands of migrating birds stop chirping and chirping.

They are rewarded with a spectacular – but fleeting – hour after sunrise.

These birds make several rounds and then head to neighboring fields, looking for unharvested grain and other food for their annual spring migration to northern New York and Quebec.

‘It reminds you that nature is amazing’

One of those who took it all in was Devon Kriebel, a 30-year-old resident of Pennsylvania who spent two hours driving here with his friend to enjoy the view.

To watch everything birds and animals in the pond, he says, “You can start to see all kinds of flying, grass in the water and you see the beauty of everything when the sun rises, not only waterfowl, but you see some eagles here, your different songbirds and different ducks.

The Pennsylvania reservoir was built fifty years ago to attract waterfowl, and over the years the gaggle has grown.

Payton Miller, an ecologist with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, describes it as a “whirlwind of a powerful bird” from the water.

“We usually see a peak of over 100,000 snow geese,” he says.

Snow goose numbers are increasing

Snow geese have been increasing in numbers on this 2,500-acre Middle Creek property since the late 1990s, due to increased food production, changes in farming practices and. warming Arctic conditions.

At this time of year, they spend months on the Atlantic coast from New Jersey south to the Carolinas, and many of them spend the winter on the Delmarva Peninsula that forms the Chesapeake Bay.

They don’t stay long at Middle Creek – it’s just a stopover on their way to summer destinations in the Canadian Arctic and west. Greenland.

But for a few weeks it’s Middle Creek’s most popular attraction with 150,000 visitors a year, including about a thousand hunters.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission, which owns Middle Creek, says about 100,000 snow geese were in Middle Creek on its busiest day last year.

This is based on a recent high but is below the one-day record of nearly 200,000 on February 21, 2018.

Rising snow goose numbers come at a cost

Snow geese are efficient, but their large numbers have come at a cost.

A 2017 study found that greater snow geese have grown in number from about 3,000 in the early 20th century to about 700,000 in the 1990s.

According to some estimates, there are now about a million birds, as well as about 10 million small geese, both young and breeding in the Arctic.

As snow goose numbers have increased in recent decades, US and Canadian wildlife officials have moved into a balancing act.

These include hunting rulesworry about crop damage, changing snow patterns and changing winter weather.

Environmental damage caused by overgrazing in the Arctic has led experts to conclude that these birds are overpopulated.

David M. Bird, a professor of wildlife biology at McGill University, describes the population as “probably one of the greatest conservation problems facing North American wildlife biologists today.”

He says: “The problem is, if you are alone farmer and you are trying to support yourself with your crops of alfalfa and wheat that you have planted for the year, and suddenly you find a hundred thousand snowdrops descending on your fields and destroying your crops, well, I felt for those guys, those people. Because I mean that’s their life. It’s not fair to them either. And that’s why it’s such a mess. “

Snow geese eat by pulling plants up by the roots, which destroys them residential areas for them, together with other different birds and wild animals.

The bird says that to nature lovers, snow geese are sweet but to farmers they are destructive.

For hunters, it’s food but for animal rights advocates, it’s a species that needs protection, he says.