Greetings All

Below is a copy of my recent post to Frontiers of ID. There was a question
about a smallish goose in Massachusetts. As part of my digging, I asked are own
Joe Engler (Ridgefield NWR) a question or two.

Greetings

The wild goose chase continues.

The following is from Joe Engler, I well-respected biologist at Ridgefield
NWR in sw WA, where a heck of a lot of geese happen to winter. BEFORE contacting
Joe, I spent several hours with David Mandell at Ridgefield looking long and
hard at Canada/Cackling Geese. There were a heck of a lot of
taverneri/parvipes (about 20% of 5000+ birds). Personally, I couldn't tell. They all looked
basically the same. Per Joe's note below, they may well have all been Taverneri
(I know, shouldn't be capitalized, but it makes reading these lengthy
paragraphs easier). The rub is that I saw a couple hundred Taverneri/Parvipes the
previous day in e. WA. I couldn't establish any difference between the two groups
(one in e. WA, one at Ridgefield) as a whole. There were certainly a few birds
at either end of the spectrum that, I guess, one could feel good about. I will
say one thing, the bird in MA was, without a doubt, towards the small and
dark end of the Taverneri/Parvipes geese I surveyed this weekend.

And, on an additional note, there were several Minima that could easily have
passed for birds on the Hutchins website, at least in color.

Ahhh, the joy of it all!!! Almost as good as gulls. See below for Joe
Engler's comments. The questions was, "What percentage of Tav/Par geese at Ridgefield
are Parvipes?"

I don't have a good answer for you on that one. We have always lumped
taverneri and parvipes because of the difficulty in distinguishing them and
because neither has been a subspecies of concern. Parvipes has for the
most part been in the Aleutian status - i.e. an occasional bird but not
enough to get concerned about in terms of sorting out. Based on a few
collars, it appears that parvipes has been increasing somewhat here in the
last few years (or maybe stopping over longer before they head into the
Willamette Valley). I expect that they would be less than 2% of the
tav/parv count, but that is just a guess. My understanding is that most
parvipes stay east of the Cascades.

In general, our surveys show the goose flock for this area to be about 70%
cacklers, 3% duskies, 1% westerns, and 25% tavs/lessers. A few Vancouvers
and Aleutians are hypothesized to be in the flock that occurs on refuge,
and presumably the surrounding region. The low western percentage occurs
because we do not survey river shorelines and islands where most of the
westerns hang out. Goose flocks seem to be in a continual state of flux
and redistribution, so anything is possible with respect to more parvipes
being here.

Aleutians still appear to exist via a few individuals in this area. The
white neck rings are helpful though individuals of all subspecies can show
decent white neck rings. That coupled with the small size and flatter head
seem to be the only decent field characteristics. Like many of these goose
species/subspecies, alot of overlap occurs and many are indistinguishable
in the field. Even measurements can't distinguish them all. Although
Aleutians in general have increased considerably, the Semidi Island group
(that frequents the north and central Oregon Coast and presumably the one
that wanders into our area) is still in very low numbers and has not
recovered; therefore, I don't expect the Aleutian numbers here have
increased any in the last 5 years or so.


Cheers
Steven Mlodinow
Everett WA