Snow Goose

About the Snow Goose

The Snow Goose turns Texas winter fields into weather - flocks of tens of thousands that lift off with a roar like surf and swirl in white-and-black blizzards over the coastal prairies. The birds come in two color morphs that travel together: the white morph, all white with black wingtips, and the dark "blue goose", slate-bodied with a white head, considered a separate species until 1973.

They are Arctic breeders, nesting in vast colonies on the tundra during the brief northern summer, then funneling down the continent's midsection to traditional wintering grounds - Texas rice country and coastal marsh chief among them. Winter flocks feed by grubbing: the strong serrated bill rips roots and tubers from wet soil, and a flock works across a field like a plow line.

Snow Goose numbers have exploded since the mid-twentieth century - agricultural waste grain fueled winter survival - to the point that the geese now damage their own Arctic breeding habitat, stripping tundra faster than it regrows. Liberalized hunting, including special spring seasons, has barely slowed the growth: a rare conservation problem of too many.

In Texas the great flocks arrive in November and leave by February, concentrated on the coastal prairies and rice fields from Katy to the lower coast, with smaller flocks inland. Standing under a lifting flock of thirty thousand Snow Geese at sunrise is, by wide agreement, one of the loudest and most thrilling moments in Texas birding.