The Offical Wildlife Refuge Count on this day was over 300,000 migrating Snow Geese.

Admittedly, in small format like this, you probably can only see what I first noticed in the distance.

I was photographing an Eagle with my 600mm lens when I heard the marsh behind me come alive. At first, things looked like a "normal" snow goose take off until the sky gradually became totally dark with the white geese. That got my notice!!! Group by group, the geese rose off the water in the distance. As they kept coming, they filled the sky until there were literally hundreds of thousands of geese in the air. Although I've seen a massive snow goose take offs so many times in the past, I have never before seen anything of this scale.

It looked like the sky had grown alive with swarming bees that rose and dove and went back and forth in a swirling motion. Their sound was deafening.

When I put my camera with the 300mm up to my eye, I could make out individual geese. In the original image you see here, there are sharply defined, individual geese. There were so many that it almost defied imagination. This photo only captures about 10% of the geese that actually filled the air. The sky was alive with chaos. What looks - at reduced size and resolution - like an abstractwas was actually an amazing moment in time. It would have taken a half dozen, tap dancing Eagles in the view finder of my other camera with the 600mm lens to be more impressive than this simple scene of a Snow Goose Take Off.

A video of more normal activity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ9UX9aHb_E&feature=youtu.be

A different year http://www.pbase.com/britestar/image/89957141
and
Closer http://www.pbase.com/britestar/image/89845693