Majestic snow geese fill winter skies over Texas Gulf Coast
Great flocks of snow geese drift down from the sky onto coastal prairies and inland farm fields, blanketing the landscape in glimmering white.
They arrive from chilly breeding grounds along the Alaskan tundra and across the Canadian Arctic and Hudson Bay. Breeding populations consist of greater snow geese on the eastern breeding range and lesser snow geese on the midcontinental and western range.
In Houston, we get lesser snow geese, although we’d be hard pressed to distinguish them from presumably larger greater snow geese that winter on the East Coast. The size of adult snow geese is mostly a result of food abundance for goslings, making some “lessers” as big as some “greaters.”
Back in the days of President James Madison, snow geese flew nonstop from Canadian breeding grounds to wintering grounds on the Texas Gulf Coast. But when Americans expanded into the Midwest, they grew acres of corn and other grains across the Plains.
Snow geese discovered waste grain in fallow Midwestern farm fields where they could stop, feed, and rest before heading to the Gulf Coast. Eventually, sweeping fields of waste grain lay in fallow rice fields along the Texas coast and inland. Geese then had a bonanza of food awaiting them on wintering grounds.
They now fill our winter skies with great ribbons of white, streaming in loose Vshaped formations stretching across the sky. High-flying flocks sound off with melodic chortling that echoes over the land, and flocks feeding on the ground will suddenly take flight while yelping in a resounding chorus of diphthongs.
Flocks roost overnight in marshes and wetlands for protection against predators, such as coyotes. Come sunrise,