[Music] hey guys Jeff the nature guy here in a cool Montana winter day and you know I'm getting a lot of phone calls this year about a lot of different animals that people aren't used to seeing this time of year and one of those the Canada Goose and I'm telling you if you've been out in the evening usually when it starts the Sun starting to Center in the early morning when the sun's rising you've seen thousands of geese flying by you know it's a Canada goose because of that V pattern they do that for aerodynamics you could see just how beautiful they are when they fly but there has been an increased number because they're changing their migration patterns now there's two things I want to talk about first of all why are there patterns changing there's a couple reasons one is it's a little bit warmer the farther north you go so they're southern migration isn't as far as it used to be so right now Billings the Montana southern Montana area it's kind of right in that ripe zone where it's a perfect place for these geese to migrate to because they're able to get food year round number two is farming practices have changed a bit so because of harvesting being a little bit later there's a lot more waste to green in the fields a lot later giving the geese a food source later in the year and so that's why when you drive by those farm fields or those big open field you'll see sometimes hundreds if not thousands of geese in those fields even though there's not water anywhere around it's because they're hard they're eating that leftover harvest grain and three changing hunting patterns as it is there's changes in the hunting timeframes and dates sometimes that can affect the migration patterns of these birds believe it or not they do know when these hunting changes occur it's pretty amazing but the other thing about these geese that I just love is of course first of all how big they are how they fly they're spectacular but how they can survive in this water when it's so cold now behind me you can see there's geese there's ducks there's even some coot out there but the amazing thing is they've got just a much more effective blood flow system especially in their feet then we as humans have so they could literally be in this water all day and not worry one bit about frostbite and those webbed toes of there's the fact to see him walking on the snow and they could care less how cold it is pretty amazing but keep your eyes open right now this is the time of year like I said sunset sunrise look for those geese you're gonna see them flying in sometimes flocks of a hundred geese and the cool thing is it could be day or night there's nothing more weird than being outside and pitch dark and hearing a flock of geese honking over your head knowing it's pitch dark outside how cool is that maybe they're following the Stars who knows guys until next time I'm Jeff the nature guy here one of the great parks here in Billings we'll see you soon