Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 02:09:33 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Marshall Iliff Subject: Howard White-fronted Goose comments MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit MDOsprey, Unanimous opinion seems to be that the Howard White-fronted Goose is pink-billed and therefore probably of the _gambeli_ subspecies. As I noted in a previous post, this is (to my knowledge) the second report of pink-billed bird and the first that will be well-documented. I saw the bird from 4:45 to 4:50 on Wednesday, along with Nancy Magnusson, Matt Hafner, and Jim Stasz. Though light was fading the bill was clearly pink and not orange. As Gail M. noted it has a pale whitish area at the central base of the upper mandible and a white bill tip. I also felt that the culmen (upper ridge of upper mandible) was bright with more saturated color than the rest of the bill. I took several photos but they will be very poor given the lighting. I encourage any photographers to try to capture this bird in good light to show the bill color. Thanks to the Howard County crew and other Ospreyers for keeping tabs on this bird. Best, Marshall Iliff miliff@aol.com Ocean City, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================