Friday, April 04, 2014

Mississippi Flyway

I was back in Arkansas in January visiting my father and it occurred to me it had been years since I had been there during migration season. I thought I'd use this post to put up a few pictures I took.

I was amazed at how Snow Geese have taken over the flyway. If you click to "embiggen" the picture above you'll see some of the thousands of geese I saw covering a 20 acre flooded rice field near Weiner, Arkansas. I drove around the area between Jonesboro and Harrisburg one afternoon and saw 8 fields in much the same condition.

It was interesting watching them take off in large groups. They seemed to go up in a spiral. They really move in monstrous flocks. I suppose there is a reason there isn't a "Geese Unlimited."

I seem to remember that the majority of the migrators were ducks when I was a kid. There's still plenty of those, too.

This time of year it seems like everyone in that part of the state wears camo.

2 comments:

dodson said...

The snows are almost at pest levels and very hard to kill by decoying or stalking. The season has been extended and electronic calls are now allowed.

The best or worse comment I hear was" If you take the breast and cut it into chunks, bread em, fry em, they taste just like chicken Mcnuggets"

Reid Farmer said...

Here we don't see them much along the Front Range - though there are lots of Canadas. You'll see a few Snows mixed into their flocks. But out on the prairie and in the Arkansas Valley, we have a lot of Snows. They are taking similar measures here to open up the season and limits.