What is the relationship between the latitude at which a migrating goose summers and the total number of miles that it flies south for the winter? Like, if you’re a goose living in New Jersey for most of the year, when it gets cold, how far are you flying? Florida? North Carolina? Or North Carolina for December and then Florida when North Carolina gets too cold? What if you spend your summers in DC? Straight to Florida at the first frost? Do all the migrating geese on the East Coast end up in Florida? Does Florida have that level of goose capacity? Isn’t it a little unfair that a Maine goose would have to fly so much farther than a New Jersey goose? Alternatively, if they all fly the same amount, a Maine goose might end up in New Jersey, while a New Jersey goose ends up in Florida. If New Jersey’s winter was too cold for the New Jersey goose, won’t it also be too cold for the Maine goose? Or are the geese more concerned with the relative temperature difference between their summer and winter homes, the way that a human from Maine might conceivably enjoy New Jersey’s milder winters? Also to consider, of course, is the latitude-dependent temporal variance in the onset of the seasons. Cold weather begins in Maine far before cold weather begins in Virginia, potentially giving the Maine goose enough of a head start to beat the Virginian geese to the best ponds of Georgia, which might in turn force the Virginian geese farther south, thus evening out the number of miles flown by both sets of geese. Yet, for a Maine goose to arrive in Georgia before a Virginian goose, the Mainer would have had to fly past the Virginian, who was not yet cold enough to start flying to Georgia. If Virginia wasn’t yet cold enough to drive its geese away, why wouldn’t the Maine goose settle in Virginia until it did? What (or who) would compel it farther south than the weather by itself dictates? This is to say nothing of the effects of climate change, non-migratory northern geese, non-migratory southern geese, or water-fowl in general. Again, what is the relationship between the latitude at which a migrating goose summers and the total number of miles it flies south for winter?! And why is no one looking into this?!