Greater White-fronted Geese in our area

[Clive Harris]

Dear all

 

A bit of change of pace from posting on rare birds.....I became interested in the identity of the Greater White-fronted Geese (GWFG) that occur in the mid-Atlantic a couple of years back after seeing a few local birds and feeling that there was some misidentification to subspecies based mostly on apparent bill color.  Since then I’ve been able to visit some of the wintering grounds of the Greenland ssp, in particular earlier this year in Wexford, Ireland where I spent a couple of days and had a chance to see over a thousand individuals.  I’ve also had the chance to photograph skins collections of GWFG at the Smithsonian and at Tring in the UK.

 

Based on this I’ve put together some notes on GWFG I’ve seen and photographed in the mid-Atlantic, and attempted to identify them to subspecies. This is contained in blog posts which start here:

 

http://gwfgmdde.blogspot.com/2017/10/greater-white-fronted-geese-in-mid.html

 

This draws on both my observations and notes (see the link below) as well as a few recent sources that have tried to establish criteria to separate Greenland and continental flyway GWFG.

 

http://gwfgmdde.blogspot.com/2017/10/greater-white-fronted-geese.html

 

Of the birds I've looked at only one seems to be a strong candidate for flavirostris.  The rest seem to have multiple features pointing to gambelli.  

I’d be grateful for any feedback or observations on anything in these blogs. 

 

Clive Harris

Cabin John, MD