Honk if you like the sound of geese above.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

I arrive at Thanksgiving 2004 thankful for many things, from God to people to health to duct tape. But lately I find myself thankful for an unlikely gift: the sight and sound of geese.

You're taking out the curbside recycle box one foggy morning and you hear the honk of a goose. You can't even see the bird, but it's there. And that's somehow reassuring knowing that, amid the fog, a goose flies overhead.

You're talking with friends outside and two flocks of geese appear high in the sky, then merge into one. Amazing stuff, geese mergers. And you feel blessed for simply having seen it.

You're lying in bed and hear the faintest cackling of geese somewhere in the night, and you're reminded that you wouldn't hear that sound in a lot of other places. And you think: How easily we take for granted nature's nuances.

If you're a farmer or a golf course owner, you may not agree. Geese eat your crops and leave fairway hazards on your course. I'm sorry. But they're only trying to survive, like the rest of us. Trying to do what their instincts tell them they should do.

If you sense more geese around here lately, you're right. Once a mere layover for Alaska-to-California flights, the Willamette Valley has become a final winter destination for tens of thousands of geese.

`In the old days, geese would `overfly' the Willamette Valley en route to the Klamath Basin, Sacramento area and, ultimately, the San Joaquin Valley,' says Jock Beall, a Willamette Valley refuge biologist for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Why the change? "The most likely explanation is the abundance of annual grass grown around here," Beall says. "The food is here, the security is here, the weather's mild."

An estimated 100,000 to 150,000 geese call the Willamette Valley home each winter, about 20,000 to 30,000 settling in the Fern Ridge Lake neighborhood.

Consider the well-worn phrase: "geese flying south for the winter." Well, we are that "south." We are to geese what Astoria was to Lewis and Clark.

Except geese repeat this trip each year, flying the 1,600-plus miles here from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in southwestern Alaska with only a few stops. (But could some of that honking be the "are-we-there-yet?" lament of goslings?)

About 99 percent of our geese are subspecies of Canada geese (cackler, Taverner, lesser and dusky) that migrate from Alaska, says Beall. One percent are resident Western Canada geese, local breeders that hang around year-round.

The migrators, on the other hand, find mates in Alaska (see "geese, pickup lines") in the spring - and stick with that mate for life. The young ones, usually four to seven in a clutch, are born in mid-April. After two months, they're ready to fly. In late summer or early fall, it's showtime: Oregon or bust.

"By November, the population is pretty well settled - the birds here for the winter are here," says Dan Gleason, who has taught ornithology at the University of Oregon.

The geese you see overhead now are just taking day trips - say, leaving Fern Ridge in the morning, feeding on grass, corn and wheat in a northeast Eugene field during the day, then returning to the lake at night. Or on a sort of time-share circuit, bouncing from Finley (Corvallis), Ankeny (Jefferson) and Baskett Slough (Dallas) national wildlife refuges.

"The middle of Fern Ridge is a good, safe place to be," Gleason says. "There aren't a lot of roaming predators."

Word gets around. (Given their formations, would this be v-mail?) "It's amazing, the size of some of these flocks," Beall says. "Some have more than 10,000 in a flock. Earlier this month, by Fiddler's Green, I heard this roar - my gosh, it was cacklers. I could go to sleep every night listening to geese."

Me, too. They ruffle the feathers - and gunk up the shoes - of some. But remember, they're heeding the Tom McCall-ian plea to "visit but don't stay." And I, for one, am thankful that they've chosen us as their winter bed-and-breakfast.