Successful Snow Goose Festival that never happened
This weekend would have been a big event – 2020 Beaverhill Snow Goose Festival – after a long time, but with the impending situation of COVID-19 it was cancelled.
However, this didn’t prevent the annual tradition of the birds, and birdwatchers were out and about witnessing the phenomenon.
“After a cliffhanger waiting for them, the snow geese arrived in the thousands; the weekend festival would have been a huge success. The festival that did not happen,” said Geoff Holroyd, Festival Chair and Chair of the Beaverhill Bird Observatory (BBO). “Large flocks of snow geese arrived in southern Alberta but were held there, first by late lying snow in central Alberta, then by strong north winds.”
By Friday the winds switched and for much of the festival weekend the winds from the south helped geese storm north making up for lost time. According to Holroyd, many flocks of 1,000 to 10,000 were reported by bird watchers with one flock of 20,000 just south of Holden.
“The flocks were definitely on the move. East of Beaverhill Lake the fields which had one flock of a 1,000 on Saturday, had two flocks of 10,000 on Sunday,” he said. “The flock south of Holden was photographed on Saturday but gone on Sunday. The bird-watcher scouts would have been busy finding geese for the planned bus tours. But the geese were there!”
Over the two days he saw about 75,000 Snow Geese, 1,500 White-fronted Geese, 5,000 Canada Geese as well as Tundra Swans, a wide variety of ducks, Black-necked Stilts and the ever beautiful Avocets.
He recorded 40 different species of birds over the two days.
“The geese should be passing over Beaver County for another two weeks . . . contd.
