I know this website is The Yellowstone Daily but Deby and I talked about it and thought you might enjoy hearing about wildlife in areas other than Yellowstone occasionally as the travel in Yellowstone is limited in the winter and I won’t be back there until April. If we are wrong please let us know. The current plan is to tell a story about non-Yellowstone animals a couple of times a week during the winter.
I am going to start the non-Yellowstone animals with snow geese. I guess I have mixed feelings about snow geese. They are one of the few bird species in the U.S. who’s numbers have been increasing in the last 40 or so years. Their numbers have increased over 300% to well over 5 million birds. I am usually thrilled when a population of birds is increasing, as most of them are decreasing, but it is the reason for the increase I am not happy about. Snow geese have learned to glean food from harvested fields of rice, corn, wheat, etc. in the winter. They used to eat mostly marsh plants in the winter but now that so many acres of land have been farmed they have learned to take advantage of that. There are 2 problems there: 1. More land for agriculture means less land for wildlife and 2. Snow geese breed in the Arctic tundra and now there are so many there that they are eating it faster than it can re-grow. The state of Texas gets a lot of snow geese in the winter in the rice fields east and west of Houston. The hunting rules are much more relaxed than the used to be and I am glad. I hate to see any animal die but their numbers have been increased due to man’s activities and that is where I draw the line. We have artificially increased the snow geese population and now that is damaging the tundra.
On the other side of the coin snow geese are pretty and make an amazing amount of noise at times. At Bosque del Apache there were well over 40,000 snow geese and sometimes the majority of them were in one pond. Every once in a while something would scare them, like an airplane, a coyote, or who knows what. When they get scared they all take off at once and make an unbelievable amount of noise. It really is one of the more impressive things I have ever seen.
So when I am at Bosque del Apache I ignore the fact that there are too many of them and simply enjoy them. I hope you can too.
Our photos are available at www.vernelehmberg.com where you will find over 4,000 photos from Africa to Yellowstone.
I love all of the posts from you and Deby both and look forward to learning some things about animals outside of Yellowstone – although I will look forward to spring when Yellowstone wakes up!!! Thanks to both of you for sharing your knowledge and adventures with those of us who lead more mundane lives… 🙂
You are most welcome!
Great photos and I had no idea that the population of snow geese is increasing. You never fail to teach me something new.