Tweets,
I would like to make a couple of comments on seeing this bird and trying to obtain better looks or photos.

The first thing is this bird appears to be extremely wary, as is the general flock of wild geese its associating with. This could be that they are simply wild birds, or nervous due to being on a runway, or a combination of the two. I know many people would like to see this bird and ideally it would be good to get better photos as from what I've learned so far subspecies differences are subtle.

I would say that it is ok for people to try to get documentation and photos/video; however, please be aware that others want to see this bird. I was working with Charlie yesterday and we developed a good strategy I think might apply to this situation as well. You might slowly approach a bird, but watch its behavior and see if what your doing might make the bird take flight. We moved 20-30 feet at a time, stopped and watch behavior.
Since others are trying for this bird, it would be good to take that into context and not harass it. When we got to within about 120 yards yesterday the group of 6 geese, including (we think) the bean goose took flight. It isn't known if this was our cause or not, people should be careful and make sure that in obtaining better documenation (which I personally think is needed) you don't ruin the experience for others. I know this has been hashed around by many people on many rare birds before, nothing new. Just a note.

Also the reason I'm saying I personally think more documentation is needed is while viewing the bird yesterday, both Charlie and I thought middendorrfii, yet now we're not so sure. There is a good link I'll copy here written by Cameron Eckart that I think should be viewed by all interested. While it is a bean goose, the subspecies question may need to be answered to help in determining its origins. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yukonbirds/files/bean-goose-yukon.pdf

Thanks,

Scott Downes
downess at cwu.edu
Ellensburg WA