10,000+ Geese Taking Flight at the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge

Three Sandhill Cranes soar against a backdrop of hundreds of geese

I lived here for a quarter century absolutely ignorant of the dramatic scenes taking place just west and south of my home. Each winter tens of thousands of Snow Geese, Ross's Geese, Cackling Geese, and White-fronted Geese as well as Sandhill Cranes take the long journey out of the Arctic Circle and head for California's Great Valley. They converge on a series of wildlife refuges that wind up and down the valley like a string of pearls. They bide their time through the winter and then when spring comes they head north again to breed.

They once ranged across the entire valley, but agricultural development has stolen away 95% of their habitat, leaving precious little living space. Refuge managers will often grow fields of corn to provide food for the hungry birds.

They spend their days foraging around the region but as the sun sets low on the horizon they start to settle into a large field where they can bunch together. This evening the flock was pretty close to the viewing platform on Beckwith Road about 10 miles west of Modesto. When I first arrived about 25 minutes before sunset, there were just a few hundred birds in the field, but more were arriving by the minute. Soon there was a thousand, and then ten thousand. The noise was deafening (the amount of gossiping going on was appalling!).

Occasionally something would startle the birds and many of them would take flight all at once, circling like a bird tornado over the field until whatever got them going resolved itself. Who knows what it might have been. I've seen coyotes lurking in the area, as well as Bald Eagles.

Soon an entire sector of the pastureland was covered with thousands of birds settling in for the night, but as I was turning to go, there was one more disturbance. There was a sound like a jet plane throttling upwards to take off and thousands of birds were once again in the air.

I caught a short video of the moment. Sorry for the shaky cinematography. I've been watching too many crime procedurals lately. Or else I was just kind of excited...