An avid birder and hobby photographer, Tara Fuller regularly drives along the northwestern shoreline of Lake Champlain looking for raptors.
But in early December something else caught her eye. She noticed limp snow geese washing up on shore or lying dead on the ground.
Snow geese migrate through the Champlain region in the spring and fall and travel in the thousands. They can be found in farm fields or on the water, usually in the northern part of the lake.
“The lake looks like it has snow on it, there’s so many of them on it,” said Curtis Latremore, owner of Pine Ridge Farm in Chazy.
Over a week, Fuller saw about 30 dead snow geese, mostly in the Dunn Bay area north of Plattsburgh.
The dead birds were usually alone or in small groupings.
“The ones that were (alive) on shore, you’d go by the next day and they'd be dead," Fuller said.” It’s heartbreaking when you see something like that."
