At the Las Gallinas ponds recently a bunch of Canada Geese barreled in noisily to pond #1 and settled for a bit. With them was a flock of about 53 smaller versions of the Canada Goose, a species call the Cackling Goose. What was really cool was the manner in which the smaller geese stayed in close proximity to each other, effectively excluding any of the nearby big honkers from crashing their party.
I'd never seen the size disparity between Cackling and Canada Geese as well, so I figured it was worth sharing some documentary photos.
Pretty sure the subspecies of Cackling Goose here is the "minima", a race formerly called the Cackling Goose when it was part of the Canada Goose complex. When they split off Cackling Goose (4 subspecies) from the Canada Goose (7 subspecies) the "minima" became only one of four types of Cackling Geese, so we now have to call it either "minima", or the Cackling Cackling Goose, Branta hutchinsii minima. I'm not making this stuff up! The other common subspecies of Cackling Goose seen here is the Aleutian Cackling Goose. Sibley writes about it a lot better than I do, and at great length (source below). Other sources also included for the brave amongst you.
Sibley on Candada/Cackling, 2004: http://www.sibleyguides.com/
Roberson (Creagus) - 2 pages:
No comments:
Post a Comment