Seth Kellogg's Birds of the Air: Thousands of Canada geese stop in Hadley

on April 10, 2014 at 8:06 AM, updated April 10, 2014 at 8:10 AM
goose 413The very rare pink-footed goose accompanies the many Canada geese as they migrate to the far north. 

The fields were empty and forlorn. Only plowed soil, old grass, and corn stubble spread far across the flat plains of North Hadley. Three cars filled with a dozen birders drove down Stockbridge Road, up Meadow, then started back on Knightly Road.

For more than a week the hotline messages had come, a goose never found before in Massachusetts was present in these fields and on nearby Lake Warner. It was present somewhere in the fields, but always with the enormous flocks of Canada Geese that roamed from field to field. They were waiting for the weather to turn and cue them in: get thee gone.

Perhaps this had been the morning they did just that. Then, the word reached us via the oracle of the magic phone and broke our gloom. The geese were farther north on Comins Road. We turned and headed north, soon seeing fields of geese in the distance.

Closer and closer we came, until we found a “flock” of birders and a roadside filled with cars and spotting scopes. It was the weekend, and these eager searchers finally had a chance to go out and play. In a few minutes, both familiar and unknown faces were all around us.

A thousand or more geese were on one side of the road, packed so tightly that one might hop across them like stones in a river. They moved slowly but incessantly, each searching for the nibble of food that others had overlooked. And while they searched, they sang.

It was not a sweet song, like the singing of scoters. It sounded more like a loud and harsh lament, a cry from hunger or fear or loss. We ignored the sad chorus and hurriedly set up our spotting scopes to scan the flock of geese across the street. In that flock was a rare goose different than the one we came here to find.

With the help of others that already had scopes “on” this goose, it took only a moment to pick out the bit of orange that stood out in the sea of gray and black and white. It was a greater white-fronted goose, a bird some of us had already seen a week before in Longmeadow.

Most scopes were aimed at the field behind us, for the rarer pink-footed goose was in the flock foraging there. We moved quickly into position and the tension increased as we tried to pick it out. Finally the bird settled down to preen at the very rear of the flock.

Since it was the first time this goose had been found in Massachusetts, we did not mean to miss a moment to study it thoroughly. It ceased its feather cleaning and wound its way through the pack of Canada geese, closer and closer with each step. We welcomed the closer view.

This was almost an alien bird, in winter normally a resident of Great Britain. It nests in faraway eastern Greenland, Iceland, and the Norwegian islands of Svarlbard in the Arctic Sea. It was no surprise that so many birders came to see this emissary of the wilderness.

The clamor of the Canada geese grew louder and more insistent. They too were on their way north to the Arctic regions of North America. The flock with the “white-front” in it rose from the earth with a thunderous roar of voice and wings. Other birds followed, rising wave after wave until the ground was bare. Then the flock with the “pink-foot” in it did the same, and their bodies blotted out the sky as they passed overhead.

Now we could hear and see more great flocks heading towards us from farther away, all following in the wake of those that had risen from the nearby fields. A mass of thousands of birds in many groups covered the skyline from horizon to horizon.

Their sound still fell on our ears, telling a tale of long but not lonely flights of passage over hills and oceans. Their lament will end only when they find home and haven in the wild places where they struggled from their shells and first saw the sky.

Seth Kellogg can be reached at
The Allen Bird Club website can be found at