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Best Friends Animal Society
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On a Flyway
For the past fourteen years, my husband and I have lived in Franklin, Pennsylvania where our house is at the confluence of French Creek and the Allegheny River. We are on a flyway for Canada geese and have a particularly fine vantage point for viewing them. We are on an embankment thirty feet above the flood plain where the geese gather on the bank of French Creek.
Several flights come twice a year and eat the grass for a week or ten days. There is one overall leader for even a big flight of 250, and a number take turns at guard duty. A large flight divides into two touching circles. The smallest within it is a group of two or three.
One day, two geese arrived. They stayed at one side of our viewing area and grazed for a week or so. Then a large flight arrived. They formed the usual two circles and ignored the couple. A week later the leader, standing near the edge of the large group, spoke to his lieutenant who then walked through both groups and spoke to the alien couple for about twenty minutes.
He walked back and reported to the leader for a few minutes. He again walked all the way back to the couple and evidently said "Would you like to join us?" He escorted them through the group directly to the leader and introduced them to him. They all left the next day.
The entire year was dry several years ago and the creek and river were very low. The geese had been accustomed to landing in the water, paddling a few yards to shore and hopping out on the grass. That fall, the creekbed was exposed twenty feet from the shore.
We heard them coming, calling after their tiring journey, "We're here! We're at our resting place!" " Wonderful I'm tired and hungry." "Acckkk! No, no don't land! Don't land! We'll have to walk on the stones and pebbles and bruise our feet! Fly on, Fly on!" They circled and called, assessing the situation.
With sad cries they flew away. No flight landed that fall.
Another year a flight arrived at a bad time and was endangered because there was no food. Several inches of snow and a hard crust of ice covered the ground. They could not break through to the grass. The next day, 150 geese turned and stared up at our windows; not calling, not talking.
I went to the store and came home with six forty-pound bags of cracked corn, which I dragged down over the embankment and cut open. I walked among the geese, spreading food. They never spoke and never moved away from me. They ate for two days and then they left.
Joan Hanson, Franklin, Pa.
