Roadiepig's Fotothing

Up until the last cold snap hit, there were still thousands and thousands (no, I am not exaggerating) of Canadian Geese hanging around our local lake and spending the night in the huge borrow pit a few blocks from our house. Since the water was still "open", they really didn't have a reason to migrate further south. I have noticed this oddity more and more over the past few years. Used to be, we would see them as they headed to the wildlife refuge in southern Illinois every fall, and would see them return in early spring. But with the increasingly mild winters we have been experiencing, along with the explosion in the Canadian Geese population nationwide, led more and more of these beautiful but noisy birds to just skip the full trip.

I haven't heard nearly as much honking after the bad weather we have been through over the last 7 days (causing the ice to cover most of both bodies of water), so I think many of these have decided it's time to head further south.

At least I found the time to shoot a few photos of these birds heading down to the water a couple of weekends ago.

And no, I didn't count the geese in this photo. It shows only a small fraction of the wave after wave of geese I watched landing in open water.If you feel like counting them, be my guest...