How to find the snow geese that graze in local rice fields
More than a million snow geese return to California’s wetlands every winter.
It’s a migration dating back millennia. Their arrival sends bird enthusiasts and conservationists flocking to the Sacramento Valley to catch the noisy spectacle. And for the past 20 years, there’s been Chico’s Snow Goose Festival of the Pacific Flyway celebrating the birds’ landing.
The five-day festival starts Jan. 22. With festivities only days away, we answer some questions about this very Californian winter roost.
For thousands of years, snow geese migrated from the Arctic along the Pacific flyway to winter on the Sacramento River floodplain, festival director Jennifer Patten said.
Now that humans control the river’s flow through dams and other management, natural flooding no longer occurs, she said. “That’s why preserving wetland wildlife refuges (where the geese now congregate) is so important.”
While some migrate from as far as Russia, most of California’s snow geese are likely flying from Alaska and western Canada, Humboldt State University wildlife management professor and goose expert Jeff Black said. While at their summer breeding grounds, snow geese lose their flight feathers, grounding them. They grow back at the end of summer, and the geese take flight for the western United States and Mexico.
Besides refuges, snow geese and other wetland wildlife hangout in rice fields, which serve as “surrogate wetlands.”
Rice farmers, who flood their fields after the fall harvest, welcome them, said Jim Morris, spokesman for the California Rice Commission in Sacramento. Snow geese arrive “just in time” to fertilize fields with their droppings, enriching soil before spring planting.
The fields supply more than 60% of the fall/winter food consumed by wetland migratory birds, Morris said. Part of that feast is the stubble left from harvested rice plants. What they don’t eat, their big flappy feet may smack down, pushing it under water and into soil. “You need the stubble to decompose before you can plant again, (so birds provide) a real service.”
The 21st annual festival kicks off Jan. 22 — a five-day series of events celebrating the return of the arctic-dwelling geese, millions of other waterfowl and thousands of raptors that migrate along the Pacific flyway to winter in the Sacramento Valley.
The festival includes workshops, art and museum exhibits, films, youth activities and more than 70 guided birding trips to sanctuaries and wetlands.
Go to www.snowgoosefestival.org to find a list of events and venues, including a link to free activities.