For those of you who may be wondering if there are Snow Geese at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, the answer is yes—just one!
A lone Snow Goose was seen earlier today among about 100 Canada Geese, two dozen Tundra Swans, and a couple of American Black Ducks clustered around a small opening in the ice on the main impoundment at Middle Creek.
So where are the thousands of Snow Geese we’ve grown accustomed to seeing during recent decades as they gather at the refuge in February while preparing to fly north for the summer?
With much of the river and nearly all of the lower Susquehanna basin’s lakes and ponds frozen, Snow Geese and many other migratory waterfowl remain concentrated on the Atlantic Coastal Plain where salty tidewater provides ice-free conditions for feeding and loafing. In fact, some ducks, particularly diving species, may still be evacuating freshwater locations to our north such as the Eastern Great Lakes where, during the past week, even more surface area has succumbed to freezing. Look for migrants to begin pushing north in bigger numbers as soon as rising temperatures start to melt local ice. (NOAA/U.S. National Ice Center image)Freezing of the Great Lakes has not been this extensive since 2019. New lake ice (shown in pink) has completed coverage of Lake Erie (lower left), isolated open water from the shorelines of Lake Huron (upper left), and now covers a large portion of the nearshore waters of Lake Ontario (right). (NOAA/U.S. National Ice Center image)
