Gaggle of Geese

"The collective noun for a group of geese on the ground is a gaggle; when in flight, they are called a skein, a team or a wedge; when flying close together, they are called a plump."

Fascinating facts, right? Somehow in the back of my mind, I knew that a group of geese was called a gaggle. However, when I went to look it up on Google to make sure that I was using the right terminology, I had no idea that geese got all these specific words to describe their groupings! I'm just blown away. I hope to see a skein soon. 

 All this to say, is that tonight after our evening walk, we came across not only a gaggle, not only a skein, but also a plump of geese too! I know! Across our street there is this massive field. I'm not sure what grows there, but it's there. The field. Anyways. The kids and I heard some honking and wanted to investigate. The field had a least 60 geese gaggling about, with more and more groups of geese flying in. It was crazy! Apparently, there was this huge goose party in the field, and every single goose knew what time to arrive and where to land. I mean, like I said, different groups kept flying in overhead every minute or so. And the noise! (The noise! The noise, noise, noise,  noise!) Let's just say there was a lot of honking. I just had to share this weird but wonderfully cool experience we had. I have definitely not seen that many geese in one place at one time in all my life. I took some pictures, but like most pictures taken of cool things, they don't do any justice to the actual experience. I didn't get any shots of the geese flying in, which is a bummer as well. 

It was such a picturesque fall night too! Definitely crisp and cool, with burnt golden colours all around. I made the pictures slightly bigger, with the hopes that you might be able to see the birds in the distance. This, however, might all be in vain, because it is very hard to see. 

The field. No geese in this picture, but you can see the path that runs along the perimeter of the field on the right. 

 Do you see the tiny dots of geese there? Right along the line of the grass at the horizon line? 

Or am I going crazy here....

 The sunset, minus any skein of geese. 

One more attempt. If I had a better zoom, or was a better photographer, or probably a better person I would have gotten a better picture. 

So thanks for listening to my ramblings about my gaggle encounter. When the kids were in the bath later talking about how cold the walk was, 

James said: "It felt like I was going to get frostbite!"

Bethy (not really listening, she's two for goodness sake): "Me tooooooo!"

Clara: "Me too! Even though I don't really know what they are...."

I love how Clara used "they" to describe frostbite.