How the geese made it through a rough winter

George R. Carter

is an Inquirer editor

Dusk was closing in fast on one of the very coldest February afternoons. I looked out the back bedroom window, out to the tidal creek behind our house. The Canada geese were still there, way out in the middle, clustered around the last bit of open water. There had been a small channel open, but even that seemed to have closed over. Now there was just a hole in the middle of the creek, with maybe two dozen geese and a handful of mallards crowded around.

I realized how vulnerable they were with almost no open water left and wondered how they'd survive a night of near-zero-degree temperatures. Just then, a blur caught my eye. A red fox was racing across the ice, parallel to the shore, about halfway out to the geese. He didn't slow down and ran past the flock. They didn't budge. After a moment, a large goose took off and made a long, low swoop around the creek. I could only presume he was the sentry and was making a reconnaissance run before hunkering down for the night.

By the time I got out there with my camera, the fox was long gone and the geese were all huddled in as close together as they could get. There was nothing much to see, but I stood there a moment and took a few distant shots of the geese. They weren't in the water now, just sitting on the ice, their heads tucked deep into their thick down.

That night, I took one last look out the window. It was ink black, but that didn't mean there wouldn't be drama out there. I imagined that ravenous fox skulking around, waiting to make his grab during the darkest, coldest hours.

Early the next morning, I looked out just as the sky was beginning to lighten and saw the dark humps out on the ice. The geese were still there. An hour or so later, I looked out again, and they were awake, flapping and waddling around. There was no water, just ice as far as I could see. It looked right out of a nature show on the Arctic Ocean. All that was missing were the polar bears and seals.

The cold blitz continued, and the geese hung on. I was pulling for them. Then one morning, my young son was eating breakfast. "Look!" he yelled. "A fox! And he's eating something." We grabbed binoculars and saw a big, rangy fox on the opposite shore, chewing away on a carcass of some sort. We couldn't tell what it was, but I had a sinking feeling. "Well, a fox has to eat, too," I thought. After watching him on and off for about 20 minutes, I finally saw him flip the carcass, and a big gray and white wing came into view. No doubt about it now. One of the geese got snatched.

We had another big blast of snowfall a day or two later, and I was out on the driveway shoveling again. I let our Labrador retrievers Porter and Velma romp around in the side yard while I worked. A moment later, I heard wild honking from the creek and saw all the geese explode into the sky. I ran for the creek yelling: "Velma! Velma!" Sure enough, there she was, out in the middle on the ice, racing around in figure eights. She came running back when she saw me, clearly elated that she had scattered all those geese with her little joy romp. I put the dogs back in the house and kept shoveling. Poor geese.

A couple of days later, a flight of new wildfowl arrived. These were not just any birds, but mergansers, and there were at least a dozen of them. We'd never seen these beautiful white ducks here before. They quickly took advantage of the little bit of water that had opened up, splashing and diving for fish. We were thrilled to see the mergansers, but wondered why they were here. Then I read a newspaper article that said they were dying by the hundreds around the Great Lakes because they couldn't get through the ice to fish. They were starving to death. Perhaps our visitors had somehow found the strength to fly from the hard-frozen north until they found some open water. The resident Canada geese weren't the only ones with a tremendous will to live.

Finally, the weather broke. Most of the ice was gone, and the geese were having a blast. Even more were flying in, and the water was alive with honking and flapping. I walked down to the bank. The mergansers were busily diving and swimming back and forth. But it was the Canada geese that caught my eye, one in particular. He was right in the middle of the creek, surrounded by dozens of others. He was undoubtedly the biggest, and he was flapping his wings, thrashing the water with his feet, and honking with all his might: "We won! We beat the winter, and we're still here!"

Now I'm looking forward to seeing the springtime lake full of his cute little goslings.