SUDDENLY GEESE AND DUCKS

     During January of 2025, I occasionally watched for flocks of large water birds on Nebraska's shallow, braided Platte River via a live camera at Audubon's Rowe Sanctuary on the Platte, and our computer screen.  But through that month, I only saw ice, snow, a few bald eagles and an occasional coyote or two.       Then, suddenly, on February 1, 2025, flocks of Canada geese, cackling geese and mallard ducks were on the open water of the Platte, I guess, literally, overnight.  To me, they were the second hint of spring's coming on the Platte and Nebraska's prairie, after the increase of daylight each succeeding day.

     That increasing of daylight stirred the birds' hormones and caused them to push north a little toward their breeding territories.  Meanwhile, some of the snow and ice melted along the Platte, causing those hundreds of waterfowl to land on it and wait for spring to catch up to their restless hormones. 

     But, within days, the Platte became ice and snow-bound again, causing the geese and ducks to leave.  However, on February 26, 2025, mixed swarms of snow geese and cackling geese, with some each of Canada geese and white-fronted geese among the throngs of snow geese and cackling geese, were back, again overnight.  And mixed flocks of northern pintail ducks, mallard ducks, American wigeon ducks, green-winged teal and gadwalls were back on the open back waters on the Platte with the geese.  

     All the geese and ducks were handsome in their insulating feathering, each species in its own way, of course.  Their attractive plumages keep these hardy waterfowl species warm and dry through winter.

     February and March are wild and wonderful months on the lovely Platte River with migrating geese, ducks and half a million northbound sandhill cranes.  All the birds stage on the Platte until spring catches up to them, then off the birds go, farther north to their breeding areas to raise young.  

     The river is a broad, shallow waterway on the Nebraskan prairie.  It is composed of many undulating braids of flowing water, bare mud flats and islands of tall, yellow grass and phragmites.

     On the computer, I first hear the great flocks of geese and cranes approaching the Platte when they go there to rest, preen and socialize between feeding forays in harvested grain fields in Nebraska's flat prairie.  Then I see the tremendous skeins of geese and cranes swirling over the river and gracefully parachuting and side-slipping into the wind down to the river like feathered snowfalls, seemingly every bird calling out raucously as they descend to the water and mud flats.  And as some enormous groups are dropping to the river, others are coming off the prairie and swiftly making their way across the sky, circling over the river and dropping to the Platte, quickly filling the shallows and flats with their great hordes.                  

     Yes, the beautiful Platte River in Nebraska's prairie is exciting during February and March with hundreds of thousands of migrating, water-loving birds leaving it and coming back to it every day.  But by early April, most of those migrant birds are going farther north to rear offspring.  

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