Geese

Besides frost, there were lots of geese in the park.  You know that goose down works well as an insulator or these guys would all be very, very cold!  For whatever reason, all the geese congregate here early in the morning, then take off at intervals, for all the world as if they’re taking off from an airport.  They make no noise while on the water, but as soon as they take off, the honking begins.  By the time I get back from my walk, they’re all gone.  But the next time I arrive, they’re back.

“Oh, listen. Listen!’ A sound like a big crowd a good way off, excited and shouting, getting closer. We stand up and scan the empty sky. Suddenly there they are (the geese), a wavering V headed directly over the hilltop, quite low, beating southward down the central flyway and talking as they pass. We stay quiet suspending our human conversation until their garrulity fades and their wavering lines are invisible in the sky.
They have passed over us like an eraser over a blackboard, wiping away whatever was there before they came.”
~Wallace Stegner

The early morning light illuminated the undersides of the geese as they flew overhead, distracting my from my search for frost photos.  Because people feed them and because there are places they can get food, not all geese go south for the winter.  I don’t mind them at the park, but when they’re at the nearby lake, their propensity for decorating the sidewalk with poop is distinctly off-putting.