Interesting! I saw a sort of similar freak - of a different goose species. On Saturday during the Worcester County rarity round-up, I saw and concluded what was probably a hybrid Canada x Cackling Goose, but I have no idea how probable that may be. It appeared to be a giant Cackling goose. Seen at the entrance to Ocean Pines community (two ponds east of Race Track Rd at Ocean Pkwy intersection). It had prefect head structure for a Cackler: noticeably small head with a vertical forehead slope, and a very small and stubby triangular shaped bill. However, it had no white ring at base of its neck collar, and weirdest of all it was the size of a medium Canada Goose. There was a large flock of Canadas there and this made for an easy comparison. In fact there were numerous very small Canadas there that may have included a few Lesser ssp. (I don't know there range, but we noticed this at this same pond at same time last year), including one group of 6 small ones which stayed away from all the other Geese and kept in a very tight flock together on the water, obviously staying to themselves. The apparent Cackler hybrid was much larger than some of these small Canadas.
I will try to look and see if the goose at Jug Bay is still around tomorrow!
Cheers-
Jeff Shenot
Croom Md
On Monday, November 12, 2012 8:35:55 PM UTC-5, danny bystrak wrote:
> Make what you will of this, but today (12 Nov. 2012) between noon and 1 pm I�saw a goose in with a flock of very talkative Canadas that I took to be�a Snow Goose, seeing it only from behInd, and based on its size.� Finally, when it turned around, I was shocked to see that everything about the head screamed Ross' Goose.� It had a very short bill with no grin and the way the beak met the face was exactly as depicted in books and like the two previous Ross' I've seen here.� The head also had a roundish, Ring-billed Gull-like shape and there wasn't a speck of yellow anywhere on it.� The problem is that it appeared to be only a little smaller than the Canadas.� In fact, I swear there was one Canada that it even looked larger than (but nothing about that bird looked like a Richardson's).� I don't know how much variation there can be in Ross' Geese, but this bird didn't even look like a hybrid.� This was in the southern end of Jug Bay, seen from my bucket.�Danny BystrakBrisyol, AA Co.
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