It’s an annual spectacle of nature that birdwatchers such as myself look forward to all winter, one that brings thousands of migrating snow geese to the small farming town of Corinne, Utah during March.
In past years as many as 20,000 snow geese have been known to migrate through this rural community while these anxious birds work their way to the arctic tundra, the northernmost lands of Canada and Alaska, for another breeding season.
The hungry geese stop to rest and feed in some of Corinne’s plentiful grain farms for a couple of weeks, gorging themselves on both last year’s corn and this year’s winter wheat fields each morning and evening to fuel this journey northward to their next resting spot somewhere along this long migration to the tundra.
The snow geese are only visible, however, during these feeding frenzy moments in the local agricultural fields since they spend the rest of the day roosting on a large, private waterfowl hunting club that borders the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge known as the Bear River Club.
Interestingly enough, the geese never actually roost on the nearby 77,000-acre federal wildlife refuge itself but for some unknown reason stage themselves on the private wetlands of the Bear River Club each and every year, far out of sight from public view until they gather in massive flocks and head out to the farms of Corinne to feed each morning and evening.
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These large flocks are quite impressive and are easily spotted once they are in the air so it’s not hard to find and follow the large swarm of geese once they take to the air and look for a field to feed in for the day.
Trust me from personal experience, thousands of snow geese flying right overhead is quite an impressive sight to behold with both your eyes and ears but not all of the residents of Corinne are as impressed with a flock of thousands of geese as many birdwatchers and nature photographers are.
(Thousands of Snow Geese in Corinne, Utah. For short nature photography tips and interesting stories about the natural world around us, subscribe to our Bear River Blogger channel on YouTube for videos and updates from our travels while out in nature, both on and off of the famed Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.)
The snow geese can leave behind a lot of costly agricultural damage for the farmers to burden, particularly in the winter wheat fields they seem to prefer over waste corn fields by pulling up the new grass-like grain shoots that were planted last fall.
If left alone these large flocks of migrating geese can literally clean out an entire winter wheat field in a day or two, leaving the farmer nothing to harvest in a few months but only bare dirt and mere remnants of last fall’s planting left in their wake, which is why most farmers will chase the geese out of their wheat fields as soon as they are spotted in one.
It might seem hard for the geese to constantly be chased from one winter wheat farm to another but it’s about the only way to protect these types of fields from most certain damage from the ravenous geese.
This miracle of migration lasts for just a few short weeks each and every spring in the small agricultural community of Corinne but the snow geese definitely grab the attention of both farmers and birdwatchers alike while they are in town but not always for the same reason and sentiment, however.
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