Hi Everyone,

At about midday on 21 December 2009, Mike Walsh, Zach Baer, Carol Gutberlet, and I converged on the huge Snow Goose flock reported by Carol Broderick near the town of Willards.  The flock was first near the corner of Woodyard Rd and Rt 50 and later was best viewed from Powellville Rd just south of Rt 50.  What a spectacle!

While we weren't able to relocate the GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE, we did see some other geese:

Cackling Goose--Mike found 1 before the rest of us arrived; eagles were shuffling the deck, and this bird easily vanished among the masses
Canada Goose--4 sticking together
Ross's Goose--at least 2 (an imm and and an adult)

What about those Snow Goose numbers?  Well, Mike and Zach kindly volunteered to count Cackling, Canada, and Ross's Geese leaving the Snow Goose count to Carol and me.  Only fair, right?  :)  Carol is always quick to remind me that she only counts birds during CBC's, so it was left to this semi-compulsive eBirder to do a little estimating.

The Snow Geese were tightly packed, so I did some rough counting/estimating along the "axes" of the flock.  I felt like I was being conservative with dimensions of 100 birds deep by 500 birds wide--50,000 Snow Geese!  I wonder if this is still an underestimate.  I'm heading out now to see if the flock is still nearby (Zach saw at least a portion of it yesterday on the north side of Rt 50).

Have fun,

Ron Gutberlet
Salisbury, MD