Middle Creek Snow Goose Watching 2016

Changde Wu    2016-03-13

Middle Creek Wildlife Management is located about 80 miles west of Philadephia, PA. Around March of every year, flocks of waterfouls will stay here for several days on their migration route from south to north. The migration birds are largely in three groups, Snow Goose, Tundra Swan and Canadian Goose. The number of Snow Goose had reached 150,000 in one day in previous years.

Snow geese like to live in groups, and they form a large flock whether it is leaving the water to go out for food or fly back to the surface of the water. Flocks of flocks snow geese take off from the water every morning before the sunrising. While some are heading toward to North with no return, others are looking for food in the nearby fields and return to the water in the evening. In the dusk, flocks and flocks snow geese land in the water surface, somes are the ones out for food while others are new arrivals from the south. We visited the Middle Creek on the weekend of March 5, 2016. According to the data from management, there were around 50,000 snow geese and 1,600 tundra swan on that weekend. Although these numbers are far less than 110,00 of snow geese on March 5, 2015, I was still shocked.

Glance of Middle Creek

P1 Looking the Middle Creek Lake from the Visitor Center

P2 Tundra swans flying above the trees

P3 Number 2 view point is very crowded and people are eeverywhere; Chinese are mojority among the birders crowd.

P4 Number 2 view point at the dusk

Flying Snow Geese

P5 Middle Creek Lake before dawn

P6 The groups just took off from the Lake

P7 Snow geese flying above the lake

P8 Flying in a form like fighting jets

P9 The sky above the Lake at the dusk

P10 Flying toward the Sun

P11 The sky at the Dusk

Abbemblying in the grass land

P12 Endless groups of snow geese landing in the grass land

P13 Incoming flocks of snow geese

P14 More birds were assemblying

P15 Snow geese almost occupied all the grass land, distance between the birds in the front and birders are 10-20 yards.

P16 A close look at the snow geese

P17 The flock took off from the ground, and flew over the head

P18 Snow geese were flying back to the Lake

P19 Empty grass land after the snow geese left

Fleet on the Lake

P20 Peaceful water surface at the dusk

P21 Those on the land seeing goodbye to their partners

P22 Tundra swans in front, and Canadian Geese in the background

P23 Tow tundra swans were fying over the others

Birds Photographing 2016 (6) - Hawks

Autum In Winter 2016 -Swans and Mill Pond