Today, we saw thousands if not tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of snow geese, on the last warm sunny day in autumn, on the beach at Saint-Vallier, downstream from Lévis. They flowed like beads on a necklace, streamed into an ever-growing, teeming, cackling mass of whiteness, spiralling, coiling, flapping their black-tipped wings as they came down to the sea; they rippled, bobbed, waddled ashore, pecking at the mud in the shallows for worms, then took fright suddenly as a helicopter throbbed overhead, and pushed off again.
The photo below shows a gaggle of bright white snow geese along the beach at Saint-Vallier, during their autumn migration southwards. There are so many of them, and they are moving so quickly, that they practically obscure the view of Grosse Île in the distance.
There was no Fata Morgana on the river today.
