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Last week, I mentioned that there are a couple of huge flocks of Canada Geese that spend their days hanging out on some fields near our place. Each evening, just as the sun is setting, the geese depart en masse, headed for their night quarters. I’m guessing that they fly to a spot somewhere on the Rideau River. I usually hear the departure just before I see it — a cacophony of honks just seconds before the first of the geese fly over our yard. On a couple of evenings, I ran for my camera hoping to capture the sight and sound of the geese from the bedroom window. I wasn’t fast enough each time, but on Saturday I did manage to catch part of the performance. Unfortunately, the geese flew in a bit to the east of our yard, so the view wasn’t quite so good as on the previous nights. However, the sound track of the clip is pretty good and gives some idea of the honking (click on above image to view and hear clip – visually, it’s not so good, but the sound is quite clear – clip is about 1.3MB).

What you can’t really hear in this clip is the sound of the wingbeats, which is what is most striking when they fly directly over the house a bit lower to the ground. That’s really neat. I’ll keep trying and maybe I’ll get lucky some night before these geese find a new hangout. By the way, I missed catching the geese one night because the sound of their honking was drowned out by that of some bagpipes on a television show that Don was watching in another room of the house. I suddenly realized that I wasn’t just hearing bagpipes but also the honking of geese, so I didn’t make it to the window with my camera that evening. Last night, the flight of the geese was very messed up as there was something going on in this area earlier in the day and the geese got spooked and were in a state of chaos, just flying back and forth through the sky for several hours. I notice they’re back in the fields again this morning, so perhaps all will return to normal and I’ll have another shot at capturing their flight over the garden.

Tags: Canada Geese, Branta canadensis