Rick wrote:Probably so, but still not cut and dry. Have photographed mallards slurping shad in Ohio River navigational dam tailwaters when it was serious winter up there. And I'd be amazed if Norther moist soil forage didn't see a lot of usage in "winters" like this one.
That would be the extreme high calorie food source.
And when we were in the 60's back around Christmas, I'll bet there were a lot more geese back in the parks and crapping on the sidewalks than when it was well below freezing.
But as you point out, the birds don't behave according to a specific pattern. You never get 100% of the population behaving similarly. You can find geese in the parks when it is very cold and in picked corn when it's 80. The difference is that you probably have 50%-75% in the grass when it's 80 and 90-95% in the corn when it's 0.
But a fresh picked field, no matter the weather, that seems like the mother of all attractants. I want to know the communication system they use to get every goose for 50 miles around into the one field that was just picked.