‘Papa Goose’: Frenchman Flies Wing-to-Wing With Geese, Creating ‘Miraculous Moments’

At 3,000 feet, the only thing separating Christian Moullec from a flock of geese is a thin veil of mountain air and a pair of leather gloves.

For three decades, Moullec has lived as “Papa Goose.” On his secluded farm in Cantal, he uses the principles of avian imprinting to raise migratory birds to view him as their maternal leader.

“Geese, cranes, and swans are migratory birds that do not actually possess a built-in migration instinct,” Moullec tells The Epoch Times. “I had to become ‘Papa Goose’ so these birds would follow me in flight.”

Moullec’s approach is rooted in principles he discovered at age 10, when he read the pioneering works of Konrad Lorenz, the Austrian zoologist and Nobel Prize winner who became the father of modern ethology. Lorenz proved the mechanics of avian imprinting—how a newborn hatchling internalizes the first moving object it sees as its mother.

To strap into Moullec’s passenger seat today is to feel the raw, unfiltered mechanics of early aviation. On the grass of his Saint-Flour airfield, the aircraft looks remarkably rudimentary: a scattering of metal tubes, a fabric wing, and a modest engine that, when yanked to life, sounds less like a high-tech flying machine and more like a loud, sputtering lawnmower.

Moullec built his first motorized hang glider layout back in 1995 with an urgent, singular purpose: to save the lesser white-fronted goose from the brink of extinction. At the time, a paltry 10 dwarf geese were estimated to be alive in Northern Europe. Orthodox scientists flatly rejected his flight plans, insisting the birds would never follow a loud machine into the air.

“Paola and I were essentially condemned to succeed, we had no choice,” Moullec says. “We absolutely had to succeed to prove to the world that you could lead birds on a journey to memorize new safely protected natural habitats.”

Wild birds are instinctively terrified of machinery, but Moullec and his wife, Paola, have conditioned the birds to accept the noise, starting when they were hatchlings. To achieve this, the couple essentially surrendered their lives to the birds, bonding with vulnerable goslings 24 hours a day on their farm and even sleeping with them in the hay.

The gamble paid off in 1995 when Moullec launched his home-built rig and his first successfully imprinted pair of geese, Fifi and Loulou, lifted off behind him into the sky. The trio made global headlines, including this one on the front page of a French newspaper: “They Didn’t Know It Was Impossible. So They Did It.”

“I felt like a man walking on the moon for the first time,” Moullec says. “Paola and I cried after that first landing.”

Moullec, who became known as “the Birdman,” has also flown with other species of geese as well as cranes and swans.

Once airborne in the crisp morning chill, time stalls. The geese seem to hang motionless in the sky, their wings flapping in slow motion. Their tail feathers make microscopic adjustments to match the airplane’s every bank and turn. The passengers’ gazes are met with dark, glossy eyes.

“They lock eyes with us continuously,” Moullec says, adding that to have these creatures look you in the eye during flight as though you are their compass “charges me with profound responsibility.”

The drone of the glider’s engine is periodically pierced by Moullec’s sharp, rhythmic cries of “Allez! Allez!” as he keeps his flock tight to the wings. In turn, the air fills with an organic, ancient echo.

“We can actually hear the cries of our birds in mid-flight,” he says. “They are constantly communicating in the air to ensure they fly in perfect harmony. These are truly extraordinarily miraculous moments.”

The skies are not always forgiving. Moullec recalls past flights where violent gusts of wind hammered his lightweight craft directly into the sea, requiring him and his birds to take shelter together in quiet bays until the weather cleared. Yet his fear of losing his geese mid-flight still gives him nightmares.

“I am responsible for their lives just as if they were my own children,” he says.

The rewards of a lifetime spent in the slipstream outweigh the terrors, particularly in how the experience alters the humans who share his cockpit. Over the years, Moullec has flown adventure seekers, environmentalists, and individuals facing terminal illnesses. He recalls a flight with a passenger who was fully paralyzed. Trapped inside an immobile frame on land, after the flight the passenger landed on the strip in tears, stating that for the first time in her life she felt completely free—as free as a bird.

When the wheels of his microlight finally touch down on the damp runway, the engine sputters to a stop, leaving an immediate, heavy silence across the valley. His passengers unstrap, their eyes wet from a mix of the biting mountain wind and overwhelming spiritual emotion. Moullec gestures skyward and smiles. He has seen this transformation hundreds of times.

“When the engine cuts out, everyone takes a deep, collective breath,” he says. “It feels exactly as if our breathing had completely stopped for the entire flight. The beauty is so arresting that it takes your breath away.”

Moullec, his face lined and weathered by decades of open-air exposure, steps carefully out of the frame. He never would have flown at all had he not read a dreamy children’s book as a boy: “The Wonderful Adventures of Nils” by Selma Lagerlöf, which chronicled a mischievous boy who gets shrunk to the size of an elf and travels the world on the back of a wild goose.

Standing on the tarmac, the real-world boy who grew up to mirror that fairy tale looks skyward.

“Most people get it the moment they look at the birds,” Moullec adds. “I offer them the portal to understand something bigger. When you experience a moment like that, your brain rewires itself. Things organize in your mind to serve as a compass for the rest of your life.”