The usual gathering of Snow Geese in and around Winchester netted positive results last week and again yesterday. The birds occupy the sewage lagoons northeast of town along County Rd. 3 (about 5,000) as well as the dairy lagoon (a few thousand). This lagoon can be viewed from Liscumb Rd on the north and from the end of Alexander Street in the centre of town (off Main Street) on the south. Both lagoons are off limits but at the sewage lagoons, when some of the birds are along the berm, they are close to the road and readily seen with or without binoculars. At some point they will head into adjacent fields of corn stubble to feed. A large percentage of the flocks are Lesser Snow Geese, the smaller subspecies, rather than just Greaters that are typically seen elsewhere. The key feature of these flocks is the very high number of blues, many hundreds. In a typical flock of mostly Greaters we have been seeing spotty numbers of blues in flocks of 25-50,000. Here, one flock of 1,200 last week was almost 70% blue, a clear indicator that most of those birds, both white and blue, were Lessers. This was much higher than the normal percentage one can expect in a flock of Lesser Snow Geese. These blue morphs are darker (more of a blue-black look) and more completely blue than the Greaters we see. In addition to Snow Geese, there were possibly two White-fronted at the sewage lagoons off #3. This is probably the most reliable local area to see Snow Geese for the next two weeks or so. The birds will likely depart after mid-May. Brian Morin