Yesterday I was at the botanical gardens with a couple of friends visiting from out of town, and I took them over to the White-Jaws/Aapsspini (Canada Geese) and we got down among them, not quite kneeling, but down among them so that we were not towering over the group.

Suddenly, five of them in front (west) of us started making a very specific set of calls and looking together in a specific direction, and the entire group all around us stopped what they were doing (grazing, preening, vigilance) and all paid close attention to the calling group.

I had not »noticed this call before, though I had heard it; I knew something important was happening because all the geese were attending it, and I looked in the direction they looked but couldn’t see anything to look at.

Suddenly, those five geese hit the air in a single movement, like a single animal… and Josh, who was next to me said ‘they were synchronizing’ and my mind almost blew a fuse, because although I would have realized the call was announcing that they were about to fly… I »definitely would not have had the idea that they were synchronizing (I think of this a bit as ‘becoming one animal’ together) prior to hitting the sky.

Later I realized that their calls may have been so significant, that they might have been setting up roles in the V-wing, in the sense that their calls could have not only synchronized their intentions … but also their timing, so that the calls might echo wingbeat-patterns, establishing their cooperative rhythm prior to lift-off… and then my mind went totally crazy with wonder… and joy. This is the kind of insight I often seek and rarely acquire…