Greater White-fronted Goose

 

As always, click the image to enlarge

Eleven Greater White-fronted Geese (Anser albifrons), along with a Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) forage on a grassy bank of a small lake. About 60 other "speckle-bellies", in hunter slang, where present, along with several hundred Canada Geese, four Ross's Geese (Anser rossii), and two Cackling Geese (Branta hutchinsii).

On February 23, Shauna and I ran down to a nearby pond in southwestern Franklin County (Ohio) to marvel over a flock of about 70 "Speckle-bellies". She had never seen this western species of goose, which was formerly a rare migrant in Ohio, but is becoming much more common. North American populations of this tundra breeder are increasing at an estimated 5% annually, and there are about 5 million Speckle-bellies globally.

A Greater White-fronted Goose drops to the ice for a nap, along with four of its compadres. The air temperature was quite brisk, in the low 20's F. Ice and cold are nothing to the hardy speckle-bellies and these are spring migrants, pushing north on the edge of ice-out.

Map courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Birds of the World monographs. I am a longtime subscriber, and if you are a student of birds, you should be, too.

Greater White-fronted Geese breed in Arctic regions over much of the globe, and the orange areas represent the breeding range. The speckle-bellies in my images have a long way to go. While there is no way to know exactly where they're headed - Alaska? northern Hudson Bay?, Nunavut? - one thing is clear: they still have a long haul ahead. It is about 1,500 miles to the nearest local that they might nest.

Birds that breed in such northerly latitudes are no strangers to frosty temperatures and icy conditions.

A handsome bird indeed, a Greater White-fronted Goose holds up a foot, enabling us to admire its orange legs. They match its bill quite nicely. We also see why the "speckle-belly" nickname arose. The formal name Greater White-fronted Goose stems from the bold ivory ring around the base of the bill. As the name implies, there is a Lesser White-fronted Goose (Anser erythropus).  It is a Eurasian species of more limited and scattered distribution, and at the risk of stepping into the subjective waters of beauty and what constitutes it, an even showier bird than the Greater White-fronted Goose. It breeds as far east as eastern Siberia - you know, the land that Sarah Palin could see from her house - but there are only two North American records: Attu, Alaska in the Aleutian chain in 2004, and 2013 on St. Paul Island, Alaska, in the Bering Sea (three years after I was there, darn it).

As noted in the first paragraph, Greater White-fronted Geese have increased greatly, both as migrants through Ohio, and in the overall range. A number of factors might account for this, including wetland restoration and increased foraging habitat on wintering grounds, better protection and stronger game laws, and the adaptability of certain large goose species, of which this is one.