While flying from New York to Florida in March we noticed flight after flight of Canada Geese heading north in the spring migration. Other passengers also saw them. Upon arrival in Miami I asked the pilot what our altitude was as we passed over the Carolinas - he said 37000 feet! He seemed shocked about Geese at that altitude. A search on Google found that a Grye Falcon impacted an airplane at 23,000 feet. Anyone know if Geese can really fly this high?
Bar-headed geese routinely migrate over Mt. Everest and the Himalayas, crusing around 30,000 feet or so for hours at a time. Whether that is possible in the Canada goose species is unknown, but it would seem possible. There was a documented mallard/airplane confrontation at 21,000 feet over Nevada.
Part of the problem is that there aren’t a lot of human beings hanging out specifically observing birds at those altitudes. So there could be LOTS of them up there we don’t know about - or none at all.
So… it’s possible. Pity you didn’t have an altimeter and camera to allow documentation - it would have been a contribution to the knowledge base of humanity.
Additional information can by found in my Staff Report with Doug, How high can birds and bees fly?
If the estimate of altitude was correct, this is close to the maximum every recorded for birds (37,900 ft) and far exceeds the North American record (21,000 ft).
Perhaps he/she observed them flying below the aircraft.
Professional pilot here …
37,000 feet would certainly be a reasonable altitude for an airliner when halfway from NY to Florida.
I personally hit a small bird once somewhere around 15-20,000 feet over Kansas. Probably something sparrow-sized; all we saw was the bloody smudge on the windshield. We were all amazed; the pilot rule of thumb is birds are rare above 5000’ above the ground and essentially non-existent above 10,000 feet above sea level. Obviously there are exceptions for birds that live in the high mountains, but they’ll normally be pretty close to the ground.
I’d have a very hard time believing geese at 37000 feet. I’ve never seen or heard of anyone ever seeing or hearing about such an event.
Air pressure at that altitude is about 1/4th of sea level, making both flying and breathing very hard. It takes roughly 4 times the flapping to hold the same weight aloft, but meanwhile it takes 4 times the breathing to get the same oxygen into the blood. So you get a roughly 16-fold increase is respiration required. Most critters don’t have that much spare vital capacity, certainly not for hours and hours.
At 37,000 feet the air temperature is normally roughly -60 degrees F. At the warmest, it’ll be -45F. Geese are hardy critters, but they migrate south to avoid temps like that.
Birds do occasionally fly into thunderstorms and get lifted to great heights. Often they’ll freeze, or be beaten to death by the turbulence and hail. But eventually, dead or alive, they’ll get spit out the side or top at 25-30,000 feet. If alive, they’ll try to fly and descend to more livable environments. That might explain one or two birds at very high altitude, but not flock after flock as the OP suggested.
FYI, roughly the same thing will happen to a small plane that wanders into a mature thunderstorm.
My bottom line: Judging distances and angles can be tough up there, especially looking out the small side windows. More likely they were well below you. But I wasn’t there, so I hesistate to say “impossible”; more like “highly improbable.”
They’d have to be mighty big geese to be visible. If they were at 20,000 ft and the OP was at 37,000, they’d be over three miles away in the vertical plane alone.
Other than that observation, I have nothing to offer. Is it possible that you were still climbing to altitude? Perhaps the pilot thought you were talking about a different leg of the flight?
Birds might, though - they have a MUCH more efficient respiratory system than other animals.
I thought geese migrated mainly for a better source of food. They certainly survive comfortably down to -30 or so if food is available. The exertion required to remain in the air may offset the temperature problem somewhat.
Which is not intended to be extremely nitpicky, just more reasons that this is in the realm of the possible (if highly improbable) rather than the impossible.