Sat. May 17 - 8:00am. SW corner of Cliff Rd and Biscayne in Inver Grove Heights. Agricultural field.
Donn, Kathy, Laura Mattsson and I observed what appeared to be a white morph adult Ross's Goose feeding with about 20 Canadas and a few Mallards. Scoped views showed that the bird was mostly Ross's-like (90?), but had the following features that suggested Snow Goose genes: - bill was intermediate in size, shape and color but closer to Ross's, i.e., a bit too large, not quite perfectly triangular and a bit too much orange, with just a hint of a grin patch. Also, the line formed by the base of the bill and facial feathering was just slightly bowed forward, not perfectly vertical as expected in pure Ross's. - head shape was intermediate but closer to Ross's, i.e., mostly round but just a bit oblong. - neck was just a bit long for a pure Ross's, i.e. it mostly looked very short but occasionally the bird extended it more than expected for pure Ross's. The bird was about 125 m away and could easily have been ID'd as a Ross's without scoped views. Traffic made it difficult to attempt digiscoping, thus no photos. James Mattsson mattjim at earthlink.net EarthLink Revolves Around You. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080518/a5055c59/attachment.html
