Snow Geese of Whites Bog

They enjoy one of the most amazing background creators for their stage, New Jersey’s sunrises and sunsets. The Snow Geese of Whites Bog come to recharge their engines for the spring migration and nesting. They need two things really, food and water. The food is to build fat reserves in the water, for protection. They come to ponds at dusk and then, at dawn, blast off to the fields to feed. That’s the general plot, but it varies every single minute. This morning, standing on the edge of the Flight Deck before sunrise, we took in the “chorus” coming from the flocks. With the @@ldallara at the ready, I watched geese come and go from the pond. They started to stage in greater and greater numbers then, without any signal, they take to the skies and head north to the fields. If you stand back from your camera, you can feel the rhythm of life and for a moment or two, you can actually feel the pulse. It is magical!

Baby It’s cold outside

Tundra Swans and the search for T207

I went looking for Tundra Swans today and meet a  couple of Wildlife photographers.

I started at Whitesbog and went all the way to back of the bog, a few and ran into Scott Fisher who really knows his birds. He told me of the search of T207 and recommended I might find some nice bird shots at Reeves Bog. So I continued my quest and found the place and beautiful spot loaded with Swans talking up a storm. I also found the landscape to my fine art photography taste and will come back for some sunrise shots. I love these amazing creatures, we are blessed to share this planet with them.
The swans migrate here from the tundra in northwestern Canada and from Alaska. They fly southeast and arrive along the central Atlantic coast in November or December and stay until March. We think they come here because it looks like the tundra area they come from. They also can find food here. These are old cranberry bogs that the farmers don’t use anymore, but they keep them flooded, so they have water in the summer for the working bogs when they need it. Cranberry farming uses a lot of pristine water. The swans eat some cranberry roots, which makes the farmers not appreciate them. They also eat a plant called red root and vegetation we call pond weed. Farmers have things that are like small cannons that make a lot of noise that they shoot off to scare the swans away from the active bogs.

Tundra swans are very shy and this is one place you can get a look at them.
Please feel free to share and comment.

Peace

The tundra swan is a small Holarctic swan. The two taxa within it are usually regarded as conspecific, but are also sometimes split into two species: Bewick’s swan of the Palaearctic and the whistling swan proper of the Nearctic. Wikipedia

The continuing saga of Tundra Swan T207
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