I was driving to work the other day and saw a flock of what appeared to be geese. They were flying North, though, in the standard V formation. I live in Wisconsin, so now is definitely the time of year they should be heading toward their winter digs.
Do geese or other migrating birds ever get confused in the direction they are flying? What would be some possible reasons to see this flock flying North this time of year?
Were they extremely high in the sky? If not, chances are they weren’t engaged in migrating, they were probably heading for the nearest water, food, or sleeping spot. They will get into V formation to do that, too…
Fetchund, these guys were pretty low in the sky.
Santo Rugger, thank you for those links. I should have known to check Wikipedia. I guess it leads to another question, then. The formation I saw had maybe 10-12 birds in it, all flying together in the wrong direction. How common is Reverse Migration? The Wiki article doesn’t really give any numbers. And I assume all of the geese I saw would all have to be suffering from it to have formed a V formation, all flying in the wrong direction?
Yep. Under certain conditions, anyway. To quote:
Related to this directional orientation is the goalless or “nonsense” orientation of many waterfowl. Experiments by Matthews ( 1961 ) and Matthews and Cook ( 1977 ) showed that Mallard ducks displaced from familiar haunts on clear days tended strongly to fly in a specific direction ( commonly northwest ) regardless of sex, age, topography of release point, time of day or season, of wind direction, or of distance or direction from home.
From The Life of Birds, by Welty and Baptisa ( 4th edition 1988, W. B. Saunders).
Different species of birds show different patterns of innate directionality ( i.e. young Ring-billed Gulls tend to instinctively head southeast ) and such can apparently be disrupted and reversed, especially among young birds, under certain circumstances.
Also individuals end up in weird places sometimes, though whether that is a migratory short-circuit of the result of being blown way off-course, or both, is probably an open question.
But much more likely it is as simple as switching from a feeding spot to a safer roosting spot for the night. A lot of Canada geese for instance are non-migratory if they can shelter and feed through winter. Even migratory geese will set up shop for several weeks in the same area and move from feeding to roosting spots. It will often take snow and ice covering up their food to prompt them to actually get their asses in gear.
I’ve seen geese lolling about on frozen ponds, shifting only when they melted a hole through the thin ice, to move to new spot and start all over again. They’re lazy beaties ;).
Reverse migration is pretty rare in terms of percentage of individuals that do it.
You don’t give your location, but these days many Canada Geese in the northern US don’t migrate any more, but hang around golf courses and lawns all winter long because they can find food there. It is far more likely that these birds were either going to migrate later on, or were not planning to migrate at all, than that an entire flock was involved in reverse migration.
Colibri, I am in Wisconsin.
Thanks for all the great information, guys! This is very interesting stuff.
The Canada goose in Wisconsin 
:
http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/caer/ce/eek/critter/bird/goose.htm
Awesome! You’re the man (or woman), Tamerlane.