It's a Snow Geese Weekend!

If you have been waiting all winter for the snow geese to arrive, wait no longer.

This is the weekend to head for the Knotts Island Causeway.

Mackay Island Wildlife Refuge has recently conducted a controlled burn of some of its marshes around the causeway and the burns get rid of old grasses and opens up the roots and shoots for snow geese to feed.

And is if they were waiting in the wings, the handsome white geese have arrived in the marshes along the causeway in huge numbers, reports both Jane Brumley and Reese Lukei.

“They were as far as the eye could see,” Brumley said.

The geese are rooting around in the marsh, their white heads all sooty and soiled from the charred grasses.

Brumley, who lives on Knotts Island, took these photos. Lukei, who has participated in snow geese banding projects, was down on the causeway, searching for geese banded with yellow neck collars.

Snow geese travel from far their far northern breeding grounds south for the winter and the Mackay Island Refuge, was established in 1960 as a safe haven for the big birds.

And this is the weekend to see why.

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