E61 Naturally Scott Adventures – One Million Snow Geese! 🕊️❄️

Welcome to the very first edition of Naturally Scott Adventures — a new series where Scott Harris takes you directly into the field to experience some of nature’s greatest spectacles, species, and wild places.

And for Episode 61, we begin with one of the most breathtaking wildlife gatherings on Earth: one million snow geese at Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge.

Each March, hundreds of thousands — and sometimes more than a million — snow geese converge on this Missouri refuge during migration. The sound is overwhelming. The sky turns white with birds. Bald eagles patrol the edges. Coyotes wait in the darkness. And for a few weeks, one corner of the Midwest becomes one of the greatest wildlife spectacles in North America.

In this episode:

🕊️ What it feels like to stand beside a million snow geese
 🦅 Bald eagles hunting over massive flocks
 🌨️ Watching snow geese land during a snowstorm
 📸 Why sunrise and sunset matter most for wildlife viewing
 🦢 Trumpeter swans, muskrats, coyotes & red-winged blackbirds
 🚗 How to visit Loess Bluffs yourself

Scott also reflects on why this experience became one of his personal “perfect moments” in nature — alongside music, memory, and the feeling of being completely immersed in the wild.

Upcoming Naturally Scott Adventures episodes include:

🐊 Alligators
 🦉 Burrowing Owls
 🦅 California Condors
 🐎 Wild Horses of Nevada

👉 Stay up to date and get bonus content here: https://naturallyscott.kit.com/5fd12c6752

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Hello. That was One Million Snow Geese, and I'm Scott Harris. Thank you for joining me today. This is the Naturally Scott Podcast. I'm your host, Scott Harris, and today we're starting something new, so I'm excited that you're going to be a part of this. It's called Naturally Scott Adventures. We're going to be doing it every other show. It'll be shorter than our regular shows. We are going to do it probably 20, 30 minutes, I would guess. We'll see how it unfolds. This is the first one that we're doing. And instead of highlighting one of our great human guests, which we've done on the previous 60 shows, this is show number 61. We are going to be highlighting an animal or maybe a location, maybe a bird, whatever it might be, that's going to be fun. We're going to bring you the best that nature has, and they're all going to be based on adventures that I have personally done and I'm sharing with you. So I'm excited about that. Upcoming shows that we already have scheduled: alligators, burrowing owls, California Condors, and the wild horses of Nevada. But today is all about snow geese. And this is in Les Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in Missouri. It's a trip that I took in March, which is when the snow geese are there. They normally stay for about two to three weeks in March. It is the single best place to see snow geese in the world. It is an unbelievable, unbelievable opportunity. And I was able to do this and spend a few days out there. And I want to share some of this with you. There were a million snow geese. At least that was the estimate from the ranger. The best I could do, and obviously it's a round number. Could have been 800,000, could have been 1.2 million. The local paper said it was 3 million while I was there. I don't think that's accurate. Um, but nonetheless, you use the word million in living animals. It's a pretty impressive thing. This was a spectacle. That's an overused word quite often, but not today. It's it's actually true. And I want to share something with you. This is completely aside from Nature and Birds, but I keep an ongoing list of what I consider perfect songs. Uh, Willie Nelson, always on my mind, Zeppelin's Stairway, Bob Seeger Turn the Page. These are songs that I think are just absolutely perfect. They're 10 out of 10 or whatever your scale was, and fair enough. And um, I've started to collect some of these in nature and and catalog them in my head and create a little list. And one of those is the one I'm going to talk to you about today, the snow geese. It's just one of those things that when you're there, it's almost hard to imagine that it's true, that you're getting to see what you're what you're a part of. Um, but you are. I was. And I'm hoping that you get to at some point, either in person or through this show. Now, when I go out on an adventure and I'm looking to see animals, whatever they are, uh wild burrows or uh osprey or manatees, whatever adventure I'm on, I try to do what I call three or four sessions. Now, those sessions are generally wrapped around sunrise and sunset or early morning and late afternoon. They're the best for photography. It's when animals are generally the most active. And so that's when I go out. The middle of the day is for other things. And in this case, with the snow geese, the middle of the day can also still be great. Um, but I generally focus on sunrise and sunset, and that's what's going to happen today. So I'm going to talk to you about one morning when I went out there to Les Bluffs in Missouri. And uh, as I'm driving up from more than a mile away, you can hear these birds cackling away. It's an amazing, amazing thing. Um, they are so loud and so constantly cackling, and there's so many of them that the sound just travels and travels and travels, and you come around this bend heading toward the National Wildlife Refuge, and all of a sudden you are just overwhelmed by this sound. Windows are down, it's a cold morning, it was maybe 24 degrees, and so you're into it already. You know, your heart starts beating a little bit faster, and the adrenaline starts to flow, and you know you're gonna see something amazing. You've read about it, maybe watch some YouTube videos, but to be there in person is just remarkable. So I pull up, it's still dark, sun's just there's a little bit of pre-dawn light, just enough. Whereas I'm driving by these, they call them pools, they don't call them ponds or lakes. I don't know why, um, but in Les Blus, and they have a number of them, they're all called pools. So as I'm driving by the first pool, you're really close to the water's edge, 15 feet maybe from the water's edge. And I notice there are dozens of muskrats, very active, every morning when I was out there, and they're swimming around and playing, and they've got their mounds uh scattered around these different ponds, and then you can just start to see through the fog into the forest. There are white-tailed deer, a ton of white-tailed deer. Now, you're on a loop. It's a 10-mile, one-way dirt road. Easy road, by the way. Sedans can take it. Obviously, if it's a hard rain or something, that's a different story. But in general, you don't need four-wheel drive or a truck or anything. Um, but you take this road out, you go about three or four miles, and you arrive at the big pool. Pelican pool is the name of it. Now, maybe there's pelicans there at other times of the year, uh, but I was there for a few days. I never saw a pelican, but I did see quite a few snow geese, and um, and it's pretty cool. So get there before dawn. I'm completely alone, there's nobody out there, and I'm always amazed at these natural spectacles when when you're there and there's nobody else there. You would think there'd be a line of people to be there. You know, you go to let's say Yellowstone on a summer day, there's 17,000 visitors in that day, and yet here you're looking at this remarkable thing, and and you're the only one there. Um, and that happened more than one morning. So this particular morning uh was very foggy, really a deep fog. And so as I pulled up immediately, I couldn't see the snow geese. I knew where they were, I'd been there before, um, and I could certainly hear them, but you couldn't see them. And in a way, that was kind of cool. The air was thick with this fog, and it was it was really neat. And I'll describe to you so when you're looking at a million snow geese, you're looking at a collection of families or groups of snow geese. They generally fly together, eat together, sleep together, and spend their days together. And those groups can number in the hundreds, or they can number in the thousands, or even the tens of thousands. There's quite a few of them. And so now, on this particular morning, this the fog starts to lift, and now you're looking out across this pelican pool at these million snow geese. Now, up close, you're about a hundred feet away uh from where the road is. You're only about 15 feet away to the edge of the pond, but there's another hundred or so feet before the snow geese start. They don't get too close to the shore because the coyotes hunt them and they'd rather not be eaten. So they're off about a hundred feet. But you can see them clearly now as the fog is lifting, and you've got the white morph and the blue morph, and so you're looking at um a variety of colors. But what's odd, what was different and struck me is as you look out across the pool, you look out across this pelican pool, they start to blur into a single white blanket. The other colors, the blacks and and and the blues, start to melt away. And I don't know exactly why. Maybe it's just my old man eyesight, but now you're looking at this white blanket and you can hear them, um, but you can't differentiate them at some point, which is wild. Now, there's two big predators that hang out at Les Bluffs. Uh, one is the coyotes, they're looking for the weak that have that have come on shore, and we'll talk about one of those at the end of the show. But that's what the coyotes are doing there hunting. The bald eagles are the other one, and they hunt as well. Now, I've seen reports of dozens of bald eagles. When I was there, I never saw more than a dozen at a time. That's still quite a lot of bald eagles. Now, the bald eagles like to circle around the perimeter of the million snow geese. The snow geese are all, it's not a, there's not multiple uh uh collections of the snow geese, it's one giant collection. And the bald eagles circle the perimeter because that's where the weak and the injured tend to go, and that's what the bald eagles are looking for. Plus, these birds are six pounds, the bald eagles can't lift them. I mean, an adult bald eagle maxes out at about 13 pounds, they're not gonna be carrying a six-pound snow goose. So they need to find the snow goose, kill it, and then swim it into shore and then eat it there before the coyotes come down. So that's what they're doing. What's remarkable about watching the bald eagles, and there's a couple different ways to describe it, but as a, and we're gonna show a video right here that shows some of this stuff. But as the bald eagles approach, the different groups of snow geese take to the air. Uh, it looks like uh like a leaf blower with you know moving thousands and millions of leaves at one time, or or a bowling ball going down and just knocking over all the pins. There's all this activity. But then as the as a bald eagle keeps going, the ones behind it drop back down, settle back in as if nothing happened, and and and then the ones in front of it take off to the air. Now they're safer in the air and they're safer in groups. And obviously, what the eagle's looking for is the ones that aren't able to fly off. They're too weak, they're too sick, they're too injured. That's what the eagles are looking for. It's not a pretty picture when they get it, but you know, eagles gotta eat. So there you go. Now, as I mentioned, you know, I'm within 100 feet of these things. Um, on the other side of me, on the other side of this dirt road, there's a train track that's almost exactly equidistant from the car. So you've got the snow geese, maybe 100 feet on one side, the train 100 feet on the other side. And to try to give you an idea of what kind of volume we're talking about here is the trains were always coming from behind me. So as I came in and parked, the trains are only going in one direction, they come in from behind me. You cannot hear the trains over the geese. Um, it's only when the trains take off and they're in front of me and the and the visual catches my attention that I see that the trains are there. But otherwise, to give you an idea, these snow geese are so loud that a freight train 100 feet away, the sound of that engine is drowned out by these snow geese. Truly one of the most amazing things you've ever seen. Now, if you're interested in going, by the way, and we're still gonna talk about more of the particulars, March is the month to go. Snow geese come, they hang out for about two to three weeks. This is part of their migration, this is their big season. They're on their way to the Arctic, which is where they're gonna go to breed and hopefully fledge their little ones. Um, and this is their big stop. If you think about an hourglass, they're coming all over from the south, and then they're collecting in the middle of that hourglass right here, less plus, and then they branch back out as they head north all the way toward the Arctic. And um when fall migration comes, they're not staying nearly as long. They're just anxious to get back home and uh settling for the winter. But here they've got it, they've got to get that energy for that last burst, that last flight up, and to have that extra energy for breeding and nesting and fledging and all the good things that they're going to do. One of the things that's fascinating when you watch this is birds are almost always food anxious. Um, everything in a bird's life is about energy. Um, you know, getting enough food to stay alive, getting enough food to stay warm through the night, last the 12 hours of dark until they're back feeding again. This is their constant. They have breeding season, of course. They're worried about being predated, of course, but their primary issue, their primary uh objective every hour that they're awake is gathering food to convert to energy. This is the one time in their lives snow geese don't have that. There is so much grain, it's unlimited. There's so much grain in the local areas, and they fly out maybe five, 10 miles. They don't go far, but the farmers have done their harvest for the year. The grain's been left out there, and the snow geese eat it. There's so much that sometimes the snow geese don't even leave for a day. Now, most of them do, but some will stay just because they're already sated. They've got so much food to choose from that they're there and they're just bulking up. They're taking all this food. It's a 3,000-mile trip that they're making. Um, but it's the one time in their life where it's just not an issue. And that's a remarkable thing to see. Now, snow geese, there's maybe 20 million of them around the country. There's other places to see them, and we're going to talk about those. Um, they're big birds. I mentioned they're six pounds, which is kind of cool. They've got a wingspan that nears five feet across, and they're 30 inches. It's sometimes it's length, sometimes it's height. But when they're standing there from top to bottom, you're looking at a 30-inch bird. So it's a big bird. Now, on this pool, the only other bird that shares the pool with them are the coots. And the coots are kind of cool. They hang around the shore, as you know. Um, the bald eagles don't bother them. They don't take to the air when the bald eagles go by. Apparently, bald eagles don't hunt them at all, especially with a million snow geese hanging around. And they just live in their own life. They scoot in and out. Sometimes they get close to the snow geese, and neither the snow geese or the coots seem to care. Um, but that is the one bird that shares the pool. Now, in the other pools around there, there's a lot of birds. Trumpeter and tundra swans, which are really remarkable to watch, massive, massive birds, and a lot of water fountain, mallards, pintails, teals. There's a there's a ton of them. Um, one of the things that I like, you get these big trumpeter swans, right? Now, when a trumpeter swan comes into land, it's like a B-52 coming in. They're coming in slow. We'll throw a couple pictures up here, but they're coming in slow and they hit that water feed first, and it's 20, 30 feet before they finally come to a to a dead stop, and the water's spraying up both sides. It looks like a train going through with a snow plow up front, just throwing the water off, and it's fantastic to watch. Whereas when snow geese are landing, they come in and when they're, especially in the evening, we're going to talk about a little bit more, but they're dropping like drain drops. They just drop straight down. They don't need a landing strip, they are good to go. One of the other great things you get to see at Les Bluffs in the birding world are tens of thousands of red wing blackbirds. And as you know, they move in these murmurations, big giant balls. Um, I don't know how to count them when they're moving. I checked it through AI. It looks like maybe 150,000 in a group, which is a remarkable number. And as you know, red wing blackbirds are very flighty. They'll take off at any movement and any sound. So they're constantly in the air. They land as one large group, drop down, you know, sweep the food, and then take to the air and move again. And this is going on all day long while you're hanging out at Les Bluffs in these giant groups of tens of thousands. So that's a that's a pretty cool thing to see. Now, as it gets a little bit later in the morning, two or three hours after sunrise, that's when these birds start to lift off. And you'll see some tentative liftoffs. You know, a couple thousand will take to the sky. Nah, not ready yet. I'm dropping back down. And they drop back down into the water, and then they're talking constantly. So they're reporting to all the other snow geese what they saw 100 or 200 feet up in the air. I don't know what it is, but snow geese have a lot to say to each other. Um, and then eventually a couple of groups will take off, and it'll be a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand in a group, and they take off, and they're taking off in 360 degrees. They're not heading off in one direction as if there's just this one massive field that they're heading to. The field's completely surrounded by spluffs. So as you're watching, it's chaotic. It's, it's, it's just the sound increases as they're in the air. And so you've got these birds flying in all 360 degrees in massive groups. They're just taking off and flying. And they're just and they're talking to each other as they go, and they're yelling down to the birds that haven't left yet, or the birds that are ahead of them, or the family members that they're flying with, and they're going off to whatever point of the compass they think is going to give them easy access to ready food, which is generally grains. And it's there. It's there for them. So there's there's none of that fear. It's just a spectacular, fun thing to see. Now, I've I spent, as I said, multiple days there. So one or two days I stayed during the day, and that's how I know the birds also, some of them stay during the day. Not all of them, but some of them. And um, I guess they're just full. That's what the Rangers explained to me. They just don't need to go out and get any more for today. In the late afternoon, they start to return. There's some tentative groups, you know, you look up in the sky and all of a sudden you'll see that V formation, and they do fly in that classic V formation, so that's a pretty cool thing to see. And you'll see small groups come in and they're doing it and they circle around Pelican Pool. They're circling around because something to them says that this is the exact perfect place that I want to land and I want to bring my family and my group down with me. I don't know exactly what they're looking for. I know they're looking to not be too close to the shore, the danger from the coyotes. And I know that they'd rather be in the center of the large group of geese over the course of the night because, again, you're protected from the edges, which is what most animals want. The edges are danger. The center is usually safer. And so that's what they're looking for. And they're constantly finagling those things. You'll see as they come down, one group drops dead center, and then another group drops down, and they've pushed the first group out. So the first group will take back to the air and come back to what they think is the center. And then all of a sudden the numbers just start to increase, and you're looking at thousands and tens of thousands, and literally hundreds of thousands of these massive six-pound snow geese coming in, and they're nothing like the swans that we talked about earlier. They are just dropping from the sky like raindrops. Once they decide they're going to land, they're just dropping. And you're watching an unlimited amount. It's not possible to count them as they as they're dropping. And it's also not possible to turn away. You have to watch them. They're just so exciting and so fascinating. And then they settle in, again, never stopping talking. The National Wildlife Refuge is not open all night. I don't know if they quiet down in the dead middle of the night. And um, I'd like to find that out. And when I do, I'll share that with you. But I know that from before dawn until after dark, these birds are talking nonstop. I mentioned there's some other places around the country to see them. Pennsylvania, the Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, is one that has a great reputation. Um I was just up in Washington in January, Skagget Valley, doing some research on some other birds, but there were tons of snow geese there, and they're regular visitors, and it's a beautiful area. Nice green fields, and the snow geese are out there. Again, red-winged blackbirds, bald eagles. Um, I was doing the work for short-eared owls, um, which is another uh one of these new naturally scot adventures that I'll be sharing with you. And in New Mexico, the Bosque de la Pache National Wildlife Refuge, and forgive me if I pronounce that wrong, has a reputation of being the most photographic spot to see snow geese. Nowhere near the numbers. Um, but as I understand it, and I will get down there, um, absolutely stunning from a photography point of view. So if you get a chance, you should do that. Now, as I as I wrap up the day, and I'm trying to share this day with you and then throw in some other facts and whatnot, and this program will be evolving. We'll learn. You guys will give us feedback on what works and what doesn't, or I hope that you do, and we'll try to make each show better. But hopefully this show has been really good for you. But I want to share with you at the end. So uh when I was when I came back in the afternoon, um, again, I stayed until everybody left, as I like to do, and a couple of things happened. Number one, it started to snow. So I am alone on this dirt road looking across at a million snow geese. I'm literally watching snow geese in the snow. I can't even begin to explain how cool that is. It just seems so poetic that that the snow, I mean, it's not a huge amount of snow, but it's enough to call it snow, especially since I grew up in California. Um, we barely get rain, much less snow. And so you're just watching this, and it's quiet, and the air is heavy, there's still some light out there, the birds are cackling, the bald eagles have given up for the day, so they're not stirring things up, and the coyotes haven't shown up yet. And so it's just you and the snow geese, and now the snow. And um that was that was my day. And as it started to end, and I fired up the car and and took off and started to finish up that 10 mile loop and head back to the to the Airbnb for the night. Um, there was a single a single snow goose that was coming out. It had hidden in the brush during the day. Now it was going to try to make its way back to the group in the evening. Um, and I watched it as it walked across the road and it had a broken wing and it was dragging its wing and um obviously crippled, and it did not look like it had any chance of recovering. And um, I learned later from the Rangers that that's generally um from a hunting uh Accident or episode where hunters have shot the bird, didn't kill it. Um the bird survived, but it's not going to. And so this is one of those examples. And I watched this bird, and it's about 30 feet in front of the car and in the sky, the lights dropping, and the bird turned and it looked at me, and and we made contact, eye contact, at least I thought that we did. And I watched it struggle. And and I'll tell you that uh for a moment it crossed my mind maybe I should put the bird out of its misery. But by the time I did, it had finished crossing the road and and it started to make its way down to the lake. Um and I don't know that I would have been able to end the bird's life. That's a that's a tough question. I'd like to think that I would have, because I know it wasn't gonna make it, and probably not through the night. I waited a couple of minutes and the bird didn't come out onto the water, which meant maybe it didn't feel that it could swim far enough to get out with its with its other snow geese. But the coyotes patrol that every night looking for exactly that. So there's there's no way that bird was gonna make it until the morning. Um and all I can hope is that it was it was quick and it was painless for the bird. And I understand coyotes have to eat. I'm I understand all of those things, and yet on an individual level, most of us find ourselves you rooting for the victim and not the hunter. Um, even though we do understand that the hunters have to hunt and they're they're doing the bird a favor, they're killing it off quickly. Um but nonetheless, it was very painful. Very it was my last day there, and it was very painful into that day, um, but did not change uh the magic of that day in the preceding days. So I hope you can get to Les Plus. It is in Missouri, this takes place in March, it is every year, um, and it is something that I strongly recommend that not just birders, but anybody who loves natural spectacles gets out there and see. So I want to thank you for joining us for our first first Naturally Scott Adventures. If you've got any comments or questions, please email me, Scott at naturaliscott.com. If you're watching this, we'll throw the logo up on the screen. But again, Scott at naturaliscott.com. Next week we have Jessica Ware as our guest. Guest, we're going back to humans, and she's going to talk to you about dragonflies and damselflies, which, as it turns out, are two different things. One of the many things that I didn't know and I learned from her, I will tell, excuse me, I will tell you that Jessica is one of our more enthusiastic and fascinating guests. I came away having learned so much about dragon and damselflies that I had no idea about, beginning with the fact that about 90% of their life is spent in the water. You know, most of us would see them. You'll see them out over a lake or any kind of waterway. Um, and that's how I always kind of thought they lived. That's not the case. Uh they are underwater for almost their entire life. So there are a lot of things you're going to learn, and you're going to fall in love with Jessica. So I hope you're able to join us next week. If you're watching me on YouTube, watching the show on YouTube, do us a favor, hit subscribe. There's no cost or anything. But every time you do, YouTube pushes these videos out, these podcasts out to more people, and that's what we want. We're sharing this message. You know, we're not running commercials, we're not making money, we're just trying to share some exciting things about nature and some brilliant people and some amazing places to go. If you've got a comment or you like it, do that as well. I like to close every show with the same thing. Make every effort to get outside. There's so much to see. And outside can be anything. It can be your back porch, your front yard, your local park, or the Serengeti. Um, but if you get a chance, get outside because there's always something to see out there. And when you do, remember to stay safe and stay curious. I'm your host, Scott Harris. This is Naturally Scott with our first ever edition of Naturally Scott Adventures. Thank you for joining us. Have a spectacular day yourself, and I'll look forward to hearing from you or seeing you across the screen next week.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Bye now. You've been listening to Naturally Scott with Scott Harris. Naturally Scott is hosted by Scott Harris, produced by Justin Harris, directed and edited by Frank Sierra. Follow us on our YouTube channel at Naturally Scott and Instagram at naturally Scott Harris. If this conversation resonated with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Naturally Scott thanks you for viewing and listening to this podcast.