Thousands of dead geese shown stuck in frozen lake in chilling footage

Horrifying footage shows thousands of dead geese stuck in a frozen lake and viewers have been left stunned.

Cameras have given us glimpses into the natural world, like when a baby great white shark was pictured in the wild for the first time. But, on the downside, they can also show us the harsh realities some species face.

A viral video showing thousands of dead geese has done just that and people have been left wondering how the terrifying scene came to be.

It was shared on Instagram by photographer Sean Weaver to his 46,000 followers. Weaver revealed the video was taken by his friend Nate Phinney who came across thousands of snow geese dead and frozen on the surface of a lake in South Dakota.

There were an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 geese. Despite the large number, the discovery of dead geese there isn’t uncommon.

They are believed to have been part of a mass die-off caused by avian influenza during recent migrations, which appears to be increasingly deadly to wild bird populations. Changes in snowfall mean their remains are now visible above the surface.

Phinney told Outdoor Life: “Usually, those geese would be spread out all over the lake, and you wouldn’t see them until spring because they’d be covered up by snow.

“Except we don’t have any snow this year, and the lakes sort of thawed back out in early December, so you get that effect of windrows of dead geese on one side of the lake. It’s kind of a shock.”

In the caption of the video, Weaver explained that the juvenile birds had been dead for some months now, having most likely died in December.

He added in the comments: “Avian influenza was bad across all of [South Dakota] in late November/December and this is just a way more intense example than I’d seen anywhere else or the videos I’d recorded.”

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