Every morning, about an hour before sunrise, the snow geese would leave en masse from a couple of the large ponds where they had spent the night. They then all collected on this pond, would preen and mill around until just after sunrise, and take off again, en masse, and head out to the fields to feed all day until it was time to head back to the large ponds at sunset to again spend the night. Sometimes something would startle them, as was the case in this shot, and they’d all take off, circle around, and settle back down until it was time to depart. It was absolutely amazing to witness. They started from the point of disturbance and came at me like a wave rushing overhead. The sound was deafening and I could feel it as they blasted toward me, literally blotting out the sun WILD RUSH is a composite of three sequential images stacked vertically as the birds charged me and I panned upward with them. No geese were added. From where I stood, it was solid birds for about 150 degrees and this image represents only a fraction of that density. It is my belief that almost all of the count – 30,000, were there that morning in front of me.
I’d swear they were having fun. It was a hot and breezy mid-summer day on the pond. And I was actually in the pond half submerged under camo with the camera supported on a surrounding air tube – to enable me to get at eye level with the ducks. There wasn’t much duck action however, and I began to scout around for something else to shoot. I spotted some damsel flies and drifted over to check them out. They were backlit and the sunlight enhanced the beauty of their wings and rim lit their delicate features. I got some beautiful shots of them hovering over the water with full reflections as soft focused shimmers of leaves and seeds floated by beneath them. Then I saw the windsurfers. The damsels were landing on the floating willow leaves. At first I assumed it was just to grab a rest mid-pond. But as I tracked with them it looked like they would land on a leaf, windsurf it to the edge of the pond, fly back up wind, select another leaf, and do it all over again. Kowabunga.
