Flocks Passing Through

We have resident geese on our community lake, including Canada geese and graylag geese. But over the past week hundreds of visiting Canada geese stopped by. Perhaps they are migrating late this year since warm weather lasted so long. Or perhaps they are local and were attracted to the layer of ice that was on the lake for a few days.

On Thursday we saw other visitors: flocks of starlings. They swooped around and landed briefly on our trees and on our grass. For a short time it looked like the yard and the lake were overwhelmed by birds!

I remember getting pictures of starlings and geese two years ago and I see that was also in mid-January. Since I took them from the same window with the same camera, they look very similar to these.

The geese appear to have formed a circular formation here. I believe this is because they like to rest on the edge of the ice (and only part of the lake was frozen). If I were a goose, the edge of the ice would offer a quick escape if a fox were to appear because I could quickly jump into the water and swim away.

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