Geese

[baldopepper]

Drove past soap lake yesterday. Covered with geese. Looked to be mostly lessers, but weren't there a week ago. Don't hunt them anymore, but suspect field hunting around there ought to be pretty good till they move on

[Fletch]

Lots of snow geese around Moses currently.  There are fair numbers of geese in the area but it will get better as the weather turns.

[baldopepper]

Never used to see snows up here around Lake Roosevelt, but have been seeing.them the last couple years. None yet this year and they usually don't hang around long
 

[Sandberm]

Geese around the Tri-Cities really started moving last Saturday, including a large flock of snow geese I saw flying by yesterday. Also lots of mallards now below Ice Harbor.

Its wild how many snow geese i have been seeing the past few years. Last January/February was wild above Ice Harbor dam. Huge flocks would jump off the water to move to a new spot, the flock spiraling downward with the geese to the inside of the spiral landing first, slowly peeling off. It was an incredible site.

[ducks4days]

Never used to see snows up here around Lake Roosevelt, but have been seeing.them the last couple years. None yet this year and they usually don't hang around long
 

Temps are warming up in Wrangel island year over year, and the snow goose population is exploding. Too many to hold in their traditional wintering grounds which is forcing them over the mountains. We will continue to see more and more of them on the east side.

[Stein]

Yet we still have restrictive hunting rules for snow geese.

[Sandberm]

Never seen so many snow geese north of the Tri-cities yesterday. Whats this Wrangel island talk?

[Igor]

Never seen so many snow geese north of the Tri-cities yesterday. Whats this Wrangel island talk?

"Wrangel Island is an island of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. It is the 92nd largest island in the world and roughly the size of Crete. Located in the Arctic Ocean between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea, the island lies astride the 180th meridian."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island

[HikerHunter]

I drove post one of the corn pond operations on the east side last week and one of their ponds was completely white with snow geese, an uncountable amount. I can't even guess at the number...

[h2ofowlr]

I drove post one of the corn pond operations on the east side last week and one of their ponds was completely white with snow geese, an uncountable amount. I can't even guess at the number...

Snows might become a big problem for the corn complexes.  That many snows can clean you out of food in a few days.

[ducks4days]

Never seen so many snow geese north of the Tri-cities yesterday. Whats this Wrangel island talk?

"Wrangel Island is an island of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. It is the 92nd largest island in the world and roughly the size of Crete. Located in the Arctic Ocean between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea, the island lies astride the 180th meridian."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island

This is where something like 90% of the snow geese in the pacific flyway breed. Its in the arctic and only grows grass (food) for a small window of the year. Warming temps increased grass growth windows and chick survival during breeding season. Combined with landscape changes in to 20th century that replaced prairie grasses and shrub steppe with wheat / corn / high calorie cereal crops, and there are easy answers for the observed population boom.

Adding insult to injury, because the birds migrate from Russia, we need to deal with the Russian government on management, who are (big shock) more hostile to work with than Canada / Mexico. The Central and Mississippi flyway have conservation orders which were enacted as a necessity to prevent a population boom from causing colony collapse for those populations. We realistically should have enacted the same for the pacific flyway 10 years ago, but Russia has blocked any attempt at doing so, and here we are.

[hdshot]

Geese around the Tri-Cities really started moving last Saturday, including a large flock of snow geese I saw flying by yesterday. Also lots of mallards now below Ice Harbor.

Its wild how many snow geese i have been seeing the past few years. Last January/February was wild above Ice Harbor dam. Huge flocks would jump off the water to move to a new spot, the flock spiraling downward with the geese to the inside of the spiral landing first, slowly peeling off. It was an incredible site.

Sounds like a you saw the tornado. Snow goose hunters love to get in the middle because they can’t hear the shots they say. But unfortunately we want almost no snow geese in the basin because they will destroy the type of hunting and habitat for the birds we are accustomed to. 

[Sandberm]

Never seen so many snow geese north of the Tri-cities yesterday. Whats this Wrangel island talk?

"Wrangel Island is an island of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. It is the 92nd largest island in the world and roughly the size of Crete. Located in the Arctic Ocean between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea, the island lies astride the 180th meridian."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island

This is where something like 90% of the snow geese in the pacific flyway breed. Its in the arctic and only grows grass (food) for a small window of the year. Warming temps increased grass growth windows and chick survival during breeding season. Combined with landscape changes in to 20th century that replaced prairie grasses and shrub steppe with wheat / corn / high calorie cereal crops, and there are easy answers for the observed population boom.

Adding insult to injury, because the birds migrate from Russia, we need to deal with the Russian government on management, who are (big shock) more hostile to work with than Canada / Mexico. The Central and Mississippi flyway have conservation orders which were enacted as a necessity to prevent a population boom from causing colony collapse for those populations. We realistically should have enacted the same for the pacific flyway 10 years ago, but Russia has blocked any attempt at doing so, and here we are.

Interesting. i was hoping you would chime in. i also like hdshot's in put.

I'll continue to observe and give input and study the situation on my own. I'm not joking when i say it is rather shocking how many snow geese i am seeing, based off I've lived here for a half decade for perspective.

[ducks4days]

Geese around the Tri-Cities really started moving last Saturday, including a large flock of snow geese I saw flying by yesterday. Also lots of mallards now below Ice Harbor.

Its wild how many snow geese i have been seeing the past few years. Last January/February was wild above Ice Harbor dam. Huge flocks would jump off the water to move to a new spot, the flock spiraling downward with the geese to the inside of the spiral landing first, slowly peeling off. It was an incredible site.

Sounds like a you saw the tornado. Snow goose hunters love to get in the middle because they can’t hear the shots they say. But unfortunately we want almost no snow geese in the basin because they will destroy the type of hunting and habitat for the birds we are accustomed to.

Its no joke, they get going so loud the geese up top cant hear shots over the geese down below, and they just keep landing. I've only had it happen a handful of times in my life, and its an unbelievable experience. 

The flocks are so big that you really need large decoy spreads to bring them in. Its getting a little better since they bumped the daily limit to 10, but it really needs to be higher to make putting out 1500 decoys worth the effort. They should have made that change 15 years ago to better control the population. I personally think now that the genie is out of the bottle and generations of birds are getting used to new migration patterns, we will not see another winter without significant numbers of snow geese on the east side unless the population collapses.