Twice a year, we hear them honking and look up to watch them formation-flying above us. Their spring passage is as reliable as a robin’s return. It is now fall and I hear them again, but their bugling is melancholy, for they head south, seeming to draw behind them longer nights and colder winds, as our part of the earth prepares for winter’s somnolence.
‘Silly Goose.’ Geese get a bad rap. They appear stupid, even for a bird. Their ungainly bodies look like what would happen if a giraffe mated with a feathered avocado, absurdly non-aerodynamic. If their honking is meant to communicate, then why are they always interrupting one another?
In truth, geese preserve much of what humans have managed to jettison from their culture. Geese are nonpredatory. They mate for life. They protect one another’s hatchling. They move as a family unit. The V shaped flying pattern, or skein, is copied by our fighter pilots; the backwash of goose wings providing uplift for the goose just behind. It is estimated that this updraft reduces energy expenditure by up to 65%. The unaided lead bird position gets rotated on a regular schedule, reducing the overall fatigue of the geese on the long migrations.
Geese learn. Israel is an agricultural nation, but one that is zealous in protecting the environment and its creatures. The European migratory pathway crosses Israel. To prevent devastation to their cash crops, the Israelis planted similar crops in random areas: along roads, in the cloverleafs of superhighways. These crops were never to be harvested. When the migrating geese landed in a commercial field, loud noise was used to drive them back into the air. This was continued until the geese landed in the noncommercial crop areas. No noise. The geese stayed put, eating in these fields until their migration recommenced.
The Israelis were relieved, not wanting to protect their crops by slaughtering geese. But they realized they would need to do this noise procedure each year during the migration. Not so. The next season and every season thereafter, the geese flew only to ‘their fields.’
Our human modern ideal of ‘counter-cultural revolutionary’ behavior would make a mockery of such faithfulness, family, and compromise as exhibited by these silly birds. Why, they don’t even celebrate diversity!!! Just remember, the next time you see them and think ‘silly bird,’ realize that the honk you hear might be one goose saying to another, “look down there at those silly humans.”
– Dennis Garvin
