The seasons, they go round and round...

It may be slow, but the season is changing.  This morning brought our first two red tail hawks in the Tom Miner Basin.  But I guess if you really want a strong sense of seasonal change, the snow geese show how its done.  Migrating from the Central Valley of California, they are heading north- en masse.   And they are heading up to the Arctic Circle, by the Bering Strait (Wrangle Island), to the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and to Hudson's Bay.  And one whole heck of a lot of them are passing through Freezeout Lake in Fairfield, Montana on the way.  Eight or ten miles of shallow lakes, separated from each other, some natural and some man-made, and part of a major irrigation system for grain growers in Choteau and Fairfield Montana, the Freezeout Lake system seems to provide just what the migrating waterfowl need. Traditionally, the peak migration time is about March 29.  It is early this year, and perhaps more dispersed over time.
We picked up the Doolittles early on Monday morning. Having taken many an environmental science class field trip where animals of one sort or another chose not to show their faces, I started the trip with my standard disclaimer, " Now, remember, just because we drive 5 hours hoping to see nature in action, we may not see one single bird!"  We drove up through Helena and Gates of the Mountains, and landed in some of the bleakest, emptiest territory I've seen. This is where some of the ICBM silos are, where our remaining nuclear missiles remain targeted at the Soviet Union are.  Though clearly not identified, you can pretty much tell where the missile silos are scattered. I didn't necessarily feel so much more secure in their presence.

We arrived in the afternoon, to the sight of 60,000 or so snow geese on the ice ( much of the lake surface is still frozen).  Even to my severely disabled ears, the sound of the geese talking and flapping and moving is quite astounding.

The typical pattern is for the geese to be on the lake at night, fly off about at 7 AM to surrounding grain fields to scavenge last years' leftover grain, fly back to the lake around 11 AM, hang out till 5:30 or 6 PM (afternoon nap, they're no dummies), fly off to the fields again for an evening snack, then fly back to the lakes after dark. So we watched the geese during the afternoon, with the snow-capped front range of the Rockies [the Bob Marshall Wilderness] in the background.
Hard to imagine this many creatures packed in such little space can get along, but they seem to.  Oh, except for two.  We watched one bite at another's tail feathers (perhaps he crossed the line of personal space?).  When the bitten one scurried off across the ice, the first was still attached to a tail feather, being towed along like a water-skiier.  These two eventually faced off in a flat out wrestling match on the ice.  Every one else shared space with gracious equanimity.  In case we seemed bored with lack of action, there were 3 ( count them, just 3!) out of the 60,000 who kept flying directly overhead, swooping and swirling like the Blue Angels, just to keep us occupied.  Us being the Doolittles, the Leslie's, and maybe 20 other people there for the show.

We decided to head in to Fairfield for dinner, then back to see if there was any evening action.  We drove into the little one central street town, but didn't see much open for dinner.  At the end of the main business blocks we turned around and came back, to find a man in the middle of the street waving us down.  Betsy said, "ruh roh..."  But I stopped and rolled down the window.  The man was about 50, and was the clerk at the grocery store. Not being particularly busy, he had seen the car, and come out of the store to ask- "You looking for a place to eat?"  "Yup, how'd ya know?"   "Can't see it, but if you go down to the Silver Dollar Saloon and turn right, there's a good little pizza and burger spot".  And we followed his directions to DJ's pizza, and had a great meal. Nice, small town, looking out for the other guy.

After dinner, back down at the lake, we didn't see much action, but saw some folks pointing binoculars toward what seemed empty sky.  A Fish Wildlife and Parks retiree came along, and said, "watch that stretch closely, there's a steady stream of snow geese flying in from Oregon.  They've been airborne about 17 hours."  Sure enough, upon closer examination, there were small flocks of 6, 3, 15, 10 coming down from higher than you could see, and it was a river that was steady and just kept on coming. The ranger said they would stop over, but end up in Saskatchewan, then ultimately back along some islands off of Washington State.  He had a radio receiver, trying to pick up signals of 31 snow geese that had been banded with transmitters in Washington State.

We stayed at a budget motel in Choteau, and got up before sunrise to head back to the lake to try to catch the dawn migration up into the fields. Phenomenal- just a constant stream of thousands and thousands of geese from some of the ponds that we couldn't even see.

Jay and June watching:

Dawn light on geese formations:

And they keep on coming- for an hour or so, steady, spread over 1-2 miles of sky, up toward the fields from the lakes:

And when the flights arrive and take off from the lakes, it seems air traffic control would be in order- we saw no collisions!

The geese didn't have the lakes all to themselves.  Estimates of tundra swans there while we visited were about 1200:

Jay added to his legendary status predicting natural phenomena.  In Newport, he would always know the day the striped bass first arrived migrating along the shore and reaching Rhode Island.  As we drove 8 miles or so up farmland hillsides along a gravel road, he commented, "there should be pheasant here... a lot of them".  He has never been anywhere near Fairfield Montana before; I haven't seen a pheasant in years.  So I gave him a tough time about his prediction.  After turning around, and heading back down the hills, we got to exactly the spot where he had made the comment, and a beautiful cock ring'necked pheasant ran right through the fields right in front of us.  And within 20 minutes we saw three more!
We drove back home a different route, through the Big Belt, Little Belt and Crazy Mountains.  Tiny towns,  high elevations, and deep , deep snow.
So the Freezeout trip was a great success- an unbelievable window into ongoing natural migrations and seasonal change.