Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Hybrid Goose at Horicon Marsh


I did a Google search for the mysterious goose at Horicon Marsh, and of course other people have seen it and documented it. There must be some sort of bird count they have there, because it was documented in May last year and again in November. Three different people documented it, and they called it a Canada goose/snow goose hybrid. It seems to have a mate (and my gut instinct is that it is the female, from the way they were acting), so maybe there will be some more hybrids in the future. Of course, the babies would be three-fourths Canada goose, so maybe they would look just like all the thousands of other Canada geese up at Horicon Marsh. My question is this: why are there no snow geese there? Or are there and I haven't seen them? Why is this particular goose hanging out with Canada geese instead of snow geese? (I can't seem to steal any of these better photographs of it off the website, so you'll just have to make do with the lousy one I posted on Sunday.) It sounds just like a Canada goose, and when it flies, its wings and tail are just like a Canada goose. Still, its head is more like a snow goose, so I wonder how it decided which species it was more comfortable with? Maybe she decided to hang out with her husband's family?

Famous Hat

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