Category Archives: Birds

Snow Geese in Flight, Bosque del Apache, NM

Snow Geese in Flight, Bosque del Apache, NM

 

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A thousand snow geese take off all at once. The black flag flight feathers of the tips of their wings shirr like the blades of powerful engines. They crawl and scrawl their way onto the sky, white and black on cold clear blue, clinging there, slow motion before they truly free themselves from gravity, and rise.
To collide, full thrust, would be disastrous to fragile hollow bones. Somehow they avoid – the tree line, its nagging branches reaching; the interloping weight of a sandhill crane amongst them by mistake; the competition of their own with each other’s wings, coordinate: all up – all out – all down. Into this chaotic space they speed. Safe. Their voices, their limbs and bodies crushing the air into that sound endless ice age snows might have made – white noise over white, frozen ground.

© 2011 Mark Seth Lender, All Rights Reserved

Blue Flag White Flag

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Soft Landings

© 2011 Mark Seth Lender
All Rights Reserved

It is not only Birds of a Feather who flock together. Along with more Great Egrets than I’d ever seen at one time, there were a fair number of Snowy Egrets, juvenile Little Blue Herons (also a white wading bird but with a bluish bill) and even one Great Blue Heron. The Great Blue and the Great Egrets are in the same weightclass, so to speak, and both were feeding on eels. The Snowies and the Little Blues were limited to small fish and glass shrimp. The other interesting difference, which I only fully appreciated when I was editing photos for Blue Flag White Flag, my piece on Great Egrets on this week’s Living on Earth was, the way the larger and smaller waders came in to land. The photographs I’ve posted show a Snowy and the ease with which she manages her touchdown. The single photo of a Great Egret (he’s the one with the yellow bill) show how much effort goes into breaking. His big wings are flexed all the way forward, catching as much air – and resistance – as he possibly can.