Bird Droppings: Snow Geese

I have always been intrigued by our winter visitors in western Washington, Snow Geese. If you drive 45 minutes north of Seattle in late winter, you have a good chance of seeing them in farm fields on the side of I-5. Sometimes you will see just a few and other times, hundreds. We were coming back from snowboarding the other day and heard about a daffodil festival going on so made an attempt to take pictures at one of the fields. Unfortunately, the fields were all in the middle of farms not accessible to visitors. While searching for a field near the road, we ran into a giant gathering of Snow Geese.

In a month, these fields will be filled with tulips for the Skagit Tulip Festival but now they are covered in foraging geese. They feed on the waste grain left in these fertile fields. You can see the daffodil fields I was trying to get to in the back of these images.

Snow Geese migrate every year in very narrow corridors and return to the same locations each year. They mate for life and are rarely seen more than 5 miles from the coast.

By the 1900, their population was down to 2,000 to 3,000 but today populations are estimated to exceed 5 million birds. Have a great Sunday!