Jean wrote (in part):

> For the last month I've been watching a pair of large geese

snip

>They are medium brown with white wing edge, bright red, knobby faces
> (like the wattles on a turkey! )


You are probably looking at Chinese Geese, the domesticated variety of the
rare eastern Asiatic Swan Goose (Asnser cygnoides), a picture of which
Chinese Goose can be found on page 97 in the third edition of the National
Geographic Field Guide to the birds of North America.

The domesticated variety can vary from what you see depicted here, with a
black bill with a white line at its base, a large black knob on the forehead
(larger in males), dark brown back of the neck, and a variety of brown and
white feathers on the rest of the body, to pure white, with orange bill and
knob on the forehead (check out both varieties at Green Lake).

The Swan Goose (the original wild stock this domesticated variety was
derived from -isn't it amazing what people can do when they put their minds
to it?-) has more-or-less the same color pattern as the domesticated Chinese
Goose as shown in the Nat. Geo. But it lacks the forehead-knob, instead its
bill slopes much more gradually into the forehead.

Hope this helps,
Martin Muller, Seattle
MartinMuller at email.msn.com