Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1896 — FLICHT OF WILD CEESE. [ARTICLE]

FLICHT OF WILD CEESE.

How the Leaders Watch Over and Protect Them. Objects which never fail to attract the attention of travelers over Western Kansas are flocks of wild geese feeding on the rich fields of wheat, which this spring seems to spread a carpet of green over all the broad domain. To rest and refresh themselves in their annual flight northward, the geese alight in thess* fields. They select their ground carefully, choosing a spot remote from human habitation and so situated that they may see all the country about, and thus be warned of the approach of danger in time to take flight. In their migration northward in the early spring and southward in the late fall, wild geese fly in families of a dozen or twenty, arranging themselves in the form of the letter “A,” one side of the letter invariably shorter than the other, and the father gander and the mother goose a little in advance of the apex. Sometimes many families unite for a time and travel together,but always that inevitable letter “A” is clearly defined in the sky, the procession led by a gander who has traveled the road before and whose honk! honk! guides the flight. While feeding, every family posts a sentinel, who stands in the midst of the feeding flock, his neck stretched high, fixed and rigid as a statue. Traveling over the Rock Island Railroad from Topeka to Hutchinson one day last week with Colonel George W. Veale, of Topeka, who knows all about wUd geese, a representative of The Star witnessed this spectacle of patience and faithfulness, and saw, too, an attempt by a farmer boy to steal upon the flock with a gun. The passengers crowded to the windows or hastened to the car platforms, and the engineer, also interested, slowed down the train at a creek. The boy crept down a draw to a point near the geese, and then began io work his way over a rise. The boy was to leeward, so the sentinel could not lie warned by scent, and the enemy had not yet come into view. Slowly the boy toiled his way, his body flat against the ground. Finally he had dragged himself to a point where he could see the geese feeding over a radius of twenty yards from the sentinel, and moving slowly in the direction of the boy. He had only to be patient and his reward would be a brace of wild geese. But he possessed a boy’s curiosity. He raised his head to look. “Quack, quack!” sounded the warning of the sentinel. All was excitement in the camp; the sentinel ran, knowing there was danger, the others of the family following. After a dash of thirty yards they rose in the air,but flying low, the sentinel’s guiding “honk!” ahead of them. At the quack of the sentinel, the boy rose and gave chase, but the geese were too fleet of foot and too far away when they took wing, and the boy’s shots fell short of his aim. The geese were in wild disorder when they lifted themselves into the air, but after that not a sound was heard save from the sentinel, whose notes soon became assuring, and before they had flown a quarter of a mile they were high in the sky, and, behold! there was the never-falliugdetter “A.” Then the spectators from the train, which was now moving rapidly, witnessed another spectacle. The danger past, the sentinel, which had been in the lead, dropped back and took his position at the end of the long arm of the “A,” while from that position the father of the family pushed to the head of the column, and, from the end of the shorter arm, the mother goose flew forward and joined him. Until that moment they had been flying in a southwesterly direction, but “honk! honk!” commanded the leader, and they whirled to the northward and were soon lost to view.—Kansas City (Mo.) Star.