Tundra Swan flying over the lake at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in Klinefeltersville, PA on Monday 2-23-2009.

For more information about Tundra Swans, visit this page at the Cornell Lab Of Ornithology.

hree Canada Geese hit a wind gust head on while traveling over the lake at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in Klinefeltersville, PA on Monday 2-23-2009. The wind was whipping around pretty good and when flocks of birds would fly over head, often times their horizontal progress was abruptly changed into a vertical launch when they hit one of the wind gusts. This would send them into all sorts of maneuvers to try and go around the gust or abort their flight plans all together and return to the lake.

For more information about Canada Geese, visit this page at the Cornell Lab Of Ornithology.

Tundra Swan conducts the orchestra in a rousing rendition of, what else, “Swan Lake”.   Taken at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area on Monday 2-23-2009.

Adult Tundra Swan flying from the lake over Klinfeltersville Road to the pond at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in Klinefeltersville, PA on Monday 2-23-2009.

When I was at Middle Creek on Saturday, a good portion of the lake and pond were frozen over and the Tundra Swans were hiding behind the trees along the road which made them somewhat hard to photograph. Today was just the opposite. The lake and pond were 80% ice free and the Swans and Canada Geese were flying like crazy in the early afternoon hours. These Tundra Swans are immense and when they fly over you they sometimes make a sound like an old car horn as they communicate to one another in flight. It’s was well worth the freezing cold and driving winds that today offered, just to be able to photograph these beautiful creatures in flight.

For more information about Tundra Swans, visit this page at the Cornell Lab Of Ornithology.

The sound of the Geese on the Willow Point trail is already at a constant low roar.  When there are three times as many Geese in a few weeks, it’s going to be pretty honkin’ loud back there.    It’s interesting to see the fly-ins and fly-outs that occur and how the shift in ratio of Snow Geese to Canada Geese in any one area of the WMA changes from hour to hour.  The Tundra Swans were the most elusive but also the most interesting, hiding behind tree cover in the area closest to Kleinfelstersville Rd.

I also had the chance to photograph some Raptors while I was there including this Red Tail Hawk that circled silently above for about five minutes before moving on over the farm fields in search of small mammals to eat.

Here are two Adult Snow Geese and one White-Morph Juvenile Snow Goose flying over the Willow Point section of the WMA.