Heisenburg's geese

The pheasant has disappeared. At least from the brush pile past my bedroom window. I miss the hollow hooting call as he sought company.

He has been replaced by geese, hundreds and hundreds of geese. They fly over twice a day, in the rose gold of sky just before dawn and just after sundown. Formations of 10 or 20 or 50 just clear the short juniper and taller pines of my hilltop, I can tell whether it will be a large or small gaggle by the number of voices I hear before they even come into view, I hear the whistle of individual wings as they just clear my second story deck, I see even their eyes.

I don’t know where they go or where they come from. They sleep somewhere at night, they feed somewhere else during the day. They are quite regular, and for all that, quite mysterious.

Are the formations made up of the same birds day after day, or is there a randomness in the grouping? Is that group of four the same I saw, or is there a new mix wing to wing? The group that flies around that giant pine, is it the same group that did so yesterday, or are some of these birds the ones that yesterday flew just over the pheasant’s brush pile?

The Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle applied to water fowl. I know that the geese will spill over my hilltop, but I don’t know where an individual bird will be in the flight. If I stop that bird, it will no longer be part of the flock. The wave in which it exists is a numerical prediction of position, not the description of a goose.