Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 15:49:08 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Matt Hafner Subject: small canada goose at Centennial MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Kim and I visited Centennial Lake yesterday after and saw the exact same waterfowl that Kurt Schwarz reported. We did see one small race Canada Goose near the Snow Goose in the restoration area. Kim spotted the goose when it was standing on a little island next to the Snow Goose. When compared to the Snow, the Canada's body was literally half the size of the Snow. With normal posture, the head of the Canada sat even with top of the Snow Goose body. This was one of the smallest Canadas I have ever seen. Later the goose was swimming and was slightly larger than the Coots. I estimated the bird about the size of a Mallard, but never had direct comparison. I am unclear on the subspecies of this bird. The back coloration was no different than any other Canada around. The chest was actually slightly darker than most Canadas, with some patchy spots of even darker feathers molting in. The patchy spots were only noticeable when the goose was standing. The white chinstrap was complete without a black line running along the chin. I'm not sure if the last field mark is important, but I've noticed that some small Canadas seems to have the chinstrap split into cheek patches. The bird was not grayer as I would expect a Richardson's Goose to be and the dark patchy feathering on the chest is very confusing. Anyway, this bird is interesting and I hope more people see it. Matt Hafner College Park, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================