"like so many snowflakes being hurled hither and thither by the wind"

The Snow Goose - one of the most abundant, wide ranging, gregarious and noisy water birds in North America - stages a showy pageant in the Southwest and central United States every year through the fall and winter seasons. “The spectacle of a flock of these white geese flying,” said naturalist George Bird Grinnell in his 1901 book American Duck Shooting, “is a very beautiful one. Sometimes they perform remarkable evolutions on the wing, and if seen at a distance look like so many snowflakes being hurled hither and thither by the wind.”