ML617474682

Observation details

*Flagged as high: spectacular northward movement of birds after sunrise. During an early work call from 6-7 AM, I noticed a few dozen geese moving north around sunrise. Then at 6:58, towards the end of the call, I walked outside and realized there was a big movement underway. I began counting geese moving past me to the west and then turned around and realized even more were moving north to the east of me. At that point I ran inside to tell Sarah what was going on, and she shortly witnessed the peak of the flight with birds directly overhead stretching in V’s as far as we could see to the north and south of us. At that point I was counting birds as best I could in groups of 100 and reached nearly 10,000 by about 7:10, surely missing many. That big wave began to taper off after about 7:10, but I counted many more birds until almost 8:00 in groups of hundreds to thousands (counting more carefully as numbers diminished). I checked for birds off and on after 8:00 and left the window open to listen for honking but did not detect any more after 8:00 as of 9:00. All birds I could see and hear were GWFG: distinctive yelping calls, brown overall, white vent/tail. Counts: 5800 + 580 + 1800 + 1600 + 2250 + 700 + 100 + 1600 + 3400 + 150 + 350 +290 + 250 = 18,870. Rounded to 19,000 to account for birds I missed and avoid false precision. Photo is a view overhead from 7:16 AM.