WATERFOWL IN FOG

      Beauty in nature is more than sunshine, flowers and bird songs.  Its also great gatherings of wintering ducks, geese and swans, preparing to migrate north, floating on large, human-made  impoundments, or sitting on their ice, on cloudy, foggy days in March.  A picture of gloom, perhaps, to some people, but another beauty to me in that wild dreariness. 

     Fog is dangerous to transportation, but it is also a part of nature.  It is unique in its beauty that does not happen every day. 

     On the afternoon of March 4, 2026, I was looking at the 400-acre lake at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in southeastern Pennsylvania by their live camera and our computer screen to see what species of waterfowl (ducks, geese and swans) were resting on it between feeding forays in nearby rye and harvested cornfields.  That impoundment was mostly covered with ice, but there was an ever-growing strip of open water in the middle of it, where most of the ducks, geese and swans, present at the time, floated on.  By late afternoon, that impoundment was getting socked in with fog, and the sky and lake were gray.  Dark, deciduous trees on hills surrounding the lake were milky-white.  

     By 4:30 that afternoon, I couldn't see anything beyond the lines of trees bordering the lake because of the fog.  The whole world seemed reduced to the lake of ice and water, shrouded in fog.  But, at the same time, flocks of tundra swans, all calling out, returned from feeding fields, swirled together into the wind for flight control, set their wings and parachuted beautifully down through the rapidly thickening fog to the gray impoundment.  There they would rest, digest, preen and socialize.  And the swans' constant vocalizing is always pleasant to hear.         

     Around 4:40 that afternoon, waves of constantly-honking snow geese returned to Middle Creek's impoundment from nearby feeding fields.  As always, their great, airborne flocks spun like discs in the ever-thickening fog before each bird set its wings and descended into the wind, like a snow fall, to the lake, with all birds clamoring loudly, as usual.  What exciting, inspiring scenes swarms of snow geese always make; they are never dull to experience.  

     From about 4:50 to 5:30 PM, the fog was becoming more dense; so thick that I could only see the lake, and no background trees or fields at all.  Still, occasional, post-feeding flocks of noisy Canada geese, snow geese and tundra swans took turns parachuting down through the thick fog to Middle Creek's lake, creating quite a show.  The constantly-babbling geese and swans settled among the flocks of ducks that were on the water all afternoon.

     Finally, I gave up watching the many thousands of waterfowl on Middle Creek's lake because of the fog and darkness closing in on the whole scene.  But I could still hear the birds on the water in continual conversation among themselves, as the fog and dark closed in on them for the night.         

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