Geese Are Good For You
They mate for life (but sometimes cheat), cooperate in flight, and can be like Beethoven or The Who
WHAT’S left to say about geese flying south for winter? Hackneyed as frost on the pumpkin (or pumpkin-spice anything), worn as the falling leaves, what have geese done for us lately?
Well, that’s up to us.
It turns out that geese, among the most familiar birds on Earth, have a lot to say (er, honk) to us about fidelity, altruism, and awe. If only we’d let them. (I even have a stupid joke for you about geese.)
Setting aside what makes a goose a goose, and how many goose species inhabit the world (because it’s complicated), consider the three we’re most likely to encounter across North America or Eurasia: Canada Goose, Snow Goose, or Greylag Goose. Sure, they migrate vast distances and live anywhere from golf courses to the Arctic. But what I admire even more about geese is their fidelity.
Geese mate for life, which is unusual among animals, especially birds. Pairs stick together year-round. And if they become separated among thousands of lookalikes in the flock, a male and female reconnect by recognizing one another’s body language, honks and other vocalizations. Think about that the next time you can’t find your car keys or recall the name of someone you’ve known for decades.
Although the lifetime bond seems to work for them, no partnership is perfect: some geese occasionally engage in infidelities, which is well studied among our most angelic goose species, the Snow Goose (Anser caerulescens).
Biologists (rarely at a loss for jargon) call the cheating “extra-pair copulation.” When a male Snow Goose in a breeding colony temporarily wanders away from his mate at the nest, a neighboring male might move in for a quick copulation. (By the way, the paired male had probably wandered off in pursuit of his own extra-pair affair—a literal case of what goes around comes around.)
Still, geese also exhibit what we might call altruism—or at the very least cooperation. First is family. Adult geese migrate with their offspring, which is also unusual among birds. When songbirds, shorebirds, raptors, and many others head south, the adults leave behind their young, which undertake their first migration unguided (but often in the company of other birds). Not so among geese. Here below is what’s almost certainly a Snow Goose family flying together.
Altruism and cooperation also take the shape of a V. When geese fly in V-formation, the lead bird’s wingtips generate upward air currents that offer extra lift to trailing birds. Because the lead bird works harder, flock members take turns in the lead to share the burden (an example for all of us).
The Pulse of Ten Thousand Wings
Fidelity, infidelity, altruism, cooperation—for us they’re matters of mind. Better yet is what geese offer the soul: the pulse of wings and a sense of awe.
It begins when you find your flock of Snow Geese—5,000 or more is not unusual. Resting in migration, the geese might be floating out on a lake or feeding in a farm field. As they dip and swim or flap and honk, the birds are a mass of kinetic energy—like a symphony orchestra tuning up for a performance.
The energy builds. The geese are 5,000 arrows drawn on 5,000 trembling bows. Sunrise might launch the flock. Or maybe hunger. Or perhaps an eagle overhead. Sometimes we never know. It doesn’t matter.
Whatever the trigger, in an instant they launch. A massive pulse of ten thousand wings. Not only do you see and hear it, the launch rolls through your blood and your bones. You become the launch. You become the flight. Awe embodied. I know of few other moments in nature that compare. It renders my superlatives inadequate.
So in closing, I’ll try my best to convey the sensation of the launch by way of my own video at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico (make sure it’s playing in HD). After that, I give you two clips that might also express for you the gathering energy and the explosion into flight: Watch and listen to the opening minute of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and then behold what is arguably the best rock-and-roll scream in the history of the universe from Roger Daltrey and The Who. They match the energy of a Snow Goose launch.
After that, as promised, the stupid joke. Onward!
The Stupid Joke
Tell this to a friend when you see geese in formation overhead (and then guard yourself):
So ornithologists have studied the V-formations in geese to determine why sometimes one arm of the V is longer than the other.
Their conclusion: the longer arm has more geese in it.
In a former time in my life, my walk to work let me get to know the school crossing guard at a certain corner. Usually we just exchanged the usual morning greetings and comments on the weather. But one Monday morning, she excitedly told me that over the weekend she had witnessed "thousands of snow geese taking off at once" and described how it quickened her pulse, filled her with awe, and made her cry tears of joy. I will never forget her animated sharing of that experience! Your piece brought her to mind immediately. Thank you!
I loved reading this, Bryan! And I adore watching the geese arrive and leave from this island. When I began working with jackdaws, they were known as birds with 'gold star monogamy', forming lifelong pair-bonds and thought to never cheat. After some genomic analysis I found this was not the case... quite a few males were fathers of nests that did not belong to them! Most amazingly, we found a female incubating a clutch where half the eggs belonged to her and her partner (The Wasp) and half belonged to The Wasp and another female, who'd had the audacity to break into the nest, lay her lovers' eggs, and then leave The Wasp's poor partner to care for a humongous brood. Oh, the drama of bird life!