Geese Insist the V Formation Is Not Showing Off, Just Good Sense

Shortly after sunrise on Tuesday, a skein of twenty-three geese passed low over the Brookfield allotments in a V so neat that a man watering his leeks put the hose down and applauded. The geese, who were on their way to a reservoir eleven miles south, have since issued a statement asking that the applause stop, on the grounds that it encourages the wrong idea.

“We are aware of the comments,” said a goose speaking from the left-hand arm of the formation, about seven birds back from the point. “People look up, they see a big arrow in the sky, and they assume we are showing off. We would like to be very clear. Nobody is showing off. If anything, the shape is the least showy thing we do. It is simply the most sensible way for twenty-three geese to travel eleven miles without anybody getting tired.”

The spokesgoose went on to explain that each bird flies slightly behind and to one side of the bird in front, “where the air is helpful,” and that the arrangement was arrived at by nobody in particular. “There was no meeting. There is no plan pinned up anywhere. You just find the spot where the flying feels easier, and so does everyone else, and then there is a V. People find this very hard to believe.”

Asked who was in charge, the goose said the question came up a lot and rested on a misunderstanding. “The one at the front is not the boss. The one at the front is having the hardest time of anybody. That is why it changes. Somebody does a stretch at the point, then drops back down the line for a rest, and somebody else moves up. On a long day you might do the front three or four times. Nobody keeps a rota. It just works out.”

On the subject of the honking, which several allotment holders described as “a lot, frankly, for six in the morning,” the goose was unapologetic. “That is how we keep track of one another. If you are seventh back on the left, you cannot see the bird at the far end of the right. So everybody says something now and then, and everybody knows everybody is still there. It is not shouting. It is a sort of register.”

The man with the leeks said he accepted the explanation but would keep clapping anyway, as it was the best thing he had seen all week. The geese said they would not stop him, but asked that he understand they could not wave back, owing to the wings being busy.

The real idea behind it

The geese have the science broadly right. A flapping wing leaves behind it a swirl of air that rises just beyond its tip, and a bird flying in exactly the right spot, behind and to the side of another, can ride that rising air and save some effort. In 2014 researchers fitted a flock of northern bald ibises with tiny data loggers and found that the birds placed themselves in those helpful spots and even timed their wingbeats to match the air left by the bird ahead.

Later work on the same ibises found the birds sharing the hard job at the front, swapping places so that the time each one spent leading roughly matched the time it spent following. Nobody draws the V. It appears because each bird does what is easiest for itself, and the easiest place happens to be the line behind a friend. Which is a nice thing to remember the next time it is your turn at the front of anything.