Where to see Snow and Ross's Geese, Northern Pintail, Cinnamon Teal, Yellow-billed Magpie, and White-tailed Kite in the Sacramento Valley.
By Harry Fuller | Published: 10/22/2008
Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge is a flat expanse of marsh and tules. It lies in one of the richest agricultural valleys on the planet. Seventy years ago our forefathers had the wisdom to begin restoring nearly 11,000 marshy acres. Now hundreds of thousands of ducks and geese winter here.
I go to the refuge in winter for its animated snowdrifts and music. White mounds form on the ponds where the water meets the tules. White curtains swirl up from the water and hundreds of feet in the air coalesce into clouds. Then streamers of white move off in one direction or another, unraveling the cloud into threads. These drifts, mounds, clouds, and threads are thousands of Snow and Ross’s Geese.
The music: a symphony of thousands of calls from as many white, feathered throats. The counter-melody is the quaking and whistles of even more thousands of ducks.
The white goose population is often more than 40,000, while the duck density is several times greater. It’s a wildlife spectacle the equal of any other in the United States. Here I stand in awe, trying to fathom a hundred thousand pintails. — Harry Fuller