Todd's Canada Goose, Crawford Village, Lancs

After a no show yesterday in weather that was nearly as bad as Sunday, the Todd's Canada goose which was found late on Saturday was today back on fields just to the east of Crawford village in south west Lancs, and it showed very well with a few hundred pink-footed geese. It's around the same size or slightly larger than the pink-feet with a darker breast and shorter neck than the familiar feral Canada's, and when it has its head down feeding it can be quite difficult to pick out from the flock. It's clearly not the bird that I saw at Banks Marsh (link opens in a new window) which was much darker, slightly larger and longer necked than this.

These days the goose formerly known as Canada is split into two species, cackling goose Branta hutchinsii and Canada goose Branta canadensis. The size of this bird combined with other features such as the large bill seems to rule out any race of cackling goose, therefore it must be a race of Canada goose. Determining exactly which race it is with any degree of confidence is extremely difficult due to variations in size and plumage which are further complicated by possible hybridisation between races, therefore these potential vagrant geese are perhaps best grouped together as "North American Canada geese".

However Todd's Canada goose  B.c. interior is the most likely vagrant to the UK and although this individual is perhaps at the smaller end, it seems to fit that race pretty closely in size, structure and plumage. The next most likely vagrant is the race confusingly known as lesser Canada goose, B.c. parvipes, but the bird is perhaps a little too big for parvipes and it has a black line on the chin strap which is apparently also not a good fit for that race. 

Whatever race it is, given that it's in a flock of pink-feet with no feral birds present, there's no reason to believe that this is anything other than a genuine vagrant North American Canada goose.

Edit 13/11/2021 - What looks like the same bird has been seen today with 7000 pink-footed geese at Docking, Norfolk. The link opens Twitter in a new window.

The chin strap!

When I took this photo I still hadn't found the pot of gold!