WY & MT - The colors of Yellowstone (3 of 3)

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 - NB

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A Taverner's Cackling Goose in Rhode Island

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Back on December 18, 2019, while helping a friend chase her life Pink-footed Goose in neighboring Rhode Island, we spotted two Cackling Geese that had been reported in the flock. Those two birds were pretty much attached at the hip. One was a bog standard Richardson's, being frosty-backed with a squared-off head and tiny bill. The bird next to it, which admittedly I didn't study for long, was certainly darker-backed and didn't have quite the same squared off head. Still, it was likely another Richardson's, but we were distracted at the time by the Pink-footed and a third Cackling Goose that proved to be much more interesting. Cackling Goose #3 was on a different end of the flock and really stood out in that it didn't really stand out. Yes, it was smaller-bodied with a short bill. It was clearly a Cackling Goose. But it did a much better job of blending in with the flock than a Richardson's CACG would have. While switching between scope and camera I would ofte...
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Hooded Crow ( Corvus cornix ); Staten Island, NY, USA ; 25 June 2011 A Hooded Crow was found at Great Kills Park on Staten Island, NY on June 20th. According to local joggers, the bird had been around for a couple weeks. This first-year bird shows no overt signs of captivity (no unusual wear, strange molt, nor any leg bands etc). There were 88 accepted records in Iceland as of 2006, with a significant number of those being spring records. I have also been told by a couple folks that there are two records from Greenland. The park is situated at a location that screams "ship-assisted," at the entrance to a major port area. The most likely scenario, IMO and in the opinion of many folks, is that this bird found itself aboard a ship in the Atlantic that carried it to NYC. Who knows how far it got by itself, but it seems quite unlikely that it reached Staten Island entirely on its own power. There's sure to be plenty of debate on this one, regarding both its origin and its ...
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