Geese And Clouds

FTLComm - Melfort - May 11, 2001

Sun glasses are really great, they reduce eye strain and improve safety for a driver but they also colour the world. On Thursday afternoon the sky was filled with threats and yet as I squinted down the road through my sun glasses I was impressed with the shades of colour so I would wipe off the glasses just to see if what I was seeing was what was there. Trying to capture those shades for you was difficult but the picture at the top of the page and the one at the bottom pretty much tell the story. The migration of arctic geese contines as they make their way from the Texas coast to the arctic and take time out to visit with us as they are passing through. Mostly snow geese but their imature version may be what have always been identified as Black Brant geese. Since the two always travel together they may not be two different species. Though they seem to be overly abundant in number it is important to remember that they are bunched up for travel and their flyway passes through the Melfort to Kinistino area, when they get to the tundra they will spread out over endless areas of tundra and flat barren land where they make their summer home and raise their young.

During the late romantic period there was a series of British painters including Turner who seemed to have spent most of their time looking up. They capture English skies and along the bottoms of their pictures, sometimes English landscape but more than anything they captured a quality of colour and picture at the bottom of this page has that colour.