[Larry]

I thought I would share a quite unique experience from a late Winter (March 9, 2003) visit to Second Beach . Now -- in my mind -- Second Beach ranks as one of the finest beaches on Earth for scenic beauty and access. It is such a sensory thrill to pop out of the serene and green trail in the woods with its Gothic spruces and hemlocks, and to have a grand coastal panorama suddenly thrust in front of your face. This is a place where you can just crank off hundreds of photographic images every time you go, and still have photographic options left over. The variety of typical beach attractions is stunning…caves, towers, offshore seastacks, localized seastacks within the tidal zone, black sand beaches, steep gravel beaches, freshwater sand deltas, barchan dunes, cliffs, headlands, lagoons, perfect tubular waves, crashing foamers, benchland spruce copses, crescent gray sand beaches, huge driftwood, tidepools, sandpools, benthonic and planktonic life forms on display…the list of attractions is stupefying. But, even more stupefying on this memorable day for me and a photographer buddy making a quick overnighter, was the unique situation of being inadvertently in the right place at the right time for one of nature’s staggering events. We broke out of the deep forest, and dropped down past the broken-topped guardian trees to the steep gravel beach. The high tide waves rolled up onto the gravel, and pulled a load of rocks back with them as they receded back off the steep incline. At first I thought the rock-grinding noise was applause of welcome for me showing up (sic), but then I realized that this is just one of nature’s sounds, and it doesn’t even care if I’m there or not. We set up the tripods and spent more than an hour photographing macro scenes and various closeups with stroboscopic flashes showing sparkling beads of ocean mist in the pre-dawn light. As the sun came up, and the outgoing ocean followed the sinking moon towards a lowering tide, and the sky turned into a silver sheen of fast-moving clouds, we moved out onto the sand, advancing film and adjusting tripods as we creeped along. We had been photographing for quite a while when something sort of just “interfered” with my thought processes. A faint noise that sounded almost like a large, far-off group of laughing children seemed to be intermittently carried on the wind to my ears. It was almost a buzzing sound at first, but then became a bit more clear. I asked my buddy, “Do you hear that?”, and he said, “Yes, it’s been getting louder for the past few minutes.” We scanned the beach and the sky for anything that could be making such a distant racket, but nothing was in view. Suddenly the sound level intensified, and we recognized the high-pitched “honking hyena” sound of geese, even as we saw a beautiful V-formation lineup with strong wings pumping the ozone over Teawhit Head about a mile to south. The V was heading our way, and we watched the line materialize into individual “dots” as the large group of geese hammered north in front of us, maintaining formation to allow for the slipstreaming so vital to conserving energy. The honking dopplered into a lower pitch as the group flew over Crying Lady Rock and struck the northern horizon about a half mile outboard of Quateata. We talked about the power and stamina of the geese, and the amazing spectacle of watching the leaders of the formation peel off and rise up, bleeding off speed to let the formation pass under, then drop into a new place at the end of the V. It was also apparent that occasionally a goose would get very tired, and have to drop to the ocean to rest. Each time this happened, the two or three geese at the tail end of the formation would peel off to accompany their brethren to the sea, staying with the tired one until some energy was regained and they would all take off, pull the flaps up, and rejoin a passing armada to continue the journey. We looked down the south horizon, and both of us did a double take, and both said “Wow!” at the same time. “Look at that! There must be thousands of them!” Indeed, there were stringers of V’s seemingly stretching for miles, coming at us at a steady clip of about 20 miles per hour in sinuous, undulating masses. This time, we just sat down and let the “goosebumps” (pun intended) on our arms tell us how cool this was. After about 15 minutes of watching this steady stream, we started wondering when this would end. Was this some kind of mega-migration? Was something wrong? How could there be so many geese at once, and why? At times, there were so many geese in front of us that the honking nearly drowned out the surf. We started timing and estimating a count of the geese at any given time between the South Quillayute Needle and Crying Lady Rock to try to extrapolate a total number of geese. We came up with a rough figure of about 4 ½ V-formations passing those coordinates every 2 minutes. The V-formations averaged about 80 geese per formation. We watched and heard these geese flying NONSTOP for a total of FOUR HOURS and 20 MINUTES! So…the very rough number we came up with was: 135 formations per hour X 80 geese = 10,800 geese per hour X 4.33 hours = 46,764 geese. It’s hard to get a good scale, but I’ve attached a photograph showing a typical snapshot of what was going on at any given time over that 4+ hour period. Keep in mind that this is a shot of the typical density of the geese that stretched our of sight from the south horizon to the north horizon, and never let up over the four hours. Although the geese were probably several hundred feet up, and about a half-mile out, the honking was quite loud. The shot is a bit large, but is about as small as I can manage and still have the geese show up in the image. Taken with a Fuji 6x17 panoramic camera with 90mm lens. Amazing. It’s hard to put into words the feelings that this spectacle engendered. I wish the image was actually a movie with sound. It seems rather conrite to just say that a “bunch of geese flew over.” I guess I can say that it simply was a grand showing of the beauty, navigation, coordination, communication, teamwork, instinct, and stamina that it takes for any migrating species to survive.

Phenomenon

[chris_c]

Wow, sounds like a truly amazing trip! Glad you were able to enjoy such an awe inspiring experience and hope that one day I may be able to know the feeling truly as you do by perhaps experiencing it myself. Kudos on the picture! While I'm sure it doesn't even begin to capture the whole experience, it's quite amazing in itself, as I have never seen such large V's of geese before! Chris

[Newt]

Wow!! Both for the Geese and the Photo. NN

[switchback]

excuse my ignorance...but aren't they going the wrong way? Beautiful shot and a great experience! You won't soon forget that. Something magical always seems to happen while backpacking the coast.

[Captain Trips]

Certainly, these migratory birds are headed for the fertile beaches of Seattle and the marsh lands near Husky Stadium !