For a birthday mini-adventure, I decided to chase a rare bird. The bird was a Taiga Bean Goose, a potential life bird, a feathered winter celebrity, that was spotted only 25 miles from home. The chase began on a sleepy, narrow road wound along the Snoqualmie River in farmlands below forested hills by Carnation, WA. Traffic was light, with as many bicyclists as cars.
My search image from the Ebird rare bird alert was a flock of Cackling Geese with a Taiga Bean Goose in its midst. After scanning the fields for several miles, I found a flock of 100+ Cackling Geese foraging in the croplands. At first glance, no other bird species were among them. Then, by panning slowly through the flock with my 10-power binoculars, I found two outlier geese: not the rare Taiga Bean Goose, but instead two Greater White-fronted Geese. Was I disappointed? No
Although Cackling and Greater White-fronted Geese are two species from the far north that commonly winter in our area, I consider them to be celebrities too! I always get a thrill seeing these and other far-flung species, knowing that their bird migration route still functions despite habitat destruction, pollution, and climate change.
These geese breed in Alaska and the Northwest Territories, where they live among Arctic and Red Foxes who predate on their eggs and chicks. Imagine what it would be like to spend part of the year in the comparitively urban Pacific Northwest?
On this day, both species were in a peaceful farm field fattening up for a return flight to their breeding grounds in the spring. I was/am grateful that they still can make this 2,000-plus mile annual journey and find suitable habitat along the way. Both species are grazers that feed on plant matter, especially grasses and sedges.
Thankfully, Cackling Geese and Greater White-fronted Geese are not endangered. Partners in Flight consider their populations to be of “Low Conservation Concern” with 4.5 and 2.1 million respectively in North America.
Cackling Geese look like miniature Canada Geese (see photo on left). True to their name, they cackle, not honk, like the larger Canada Geese, and their tone is higher-pitched. Long considered a subspecies of Canada Geese, Cackling Geese were split into a separate species in 2004. Many Cackling Geese that winter in western Washington breed in Alaska’s Kuskokwim River Delta.
Greater White-fronted Geese are named for the white arc that around the base of the upper mandible of their orange bill. They are often found in flocks of Snow Geese or Canada Geese. Some appear in urban parks like Seattle’s Green Lake and Magnuson Park.
The future of their world is also the future of ours. In the words of ecologist and author Carl Safina: “The world belongs to us, the wise ones, we declare…will we be pirates or captains, slumlords, or godparents of time? Will we burn the furniture for heat or be good tenants?”– The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World.
I hope we become better tenants of the creation that we are “renting.”
