[EBB Sightings] two strange Lake Merritt geese

David Couch wrote:

> At Lake Merritt, from Perkins Street eastward on the lawn between
> Bellevue and the lake today are two geese I am wondering about.

I see them both often....

> One is (I think) some kind of domestic goose. It is very large (at
> least as big as the Canadas it is associating with, sometimes
> noisily) with a very big cushiony white belly (I would say pregnant
> if I didn't know better), a bright orange bill and orange feet.

That big belly (fat arse is how I think of it) is a dead giveaway for 
domestic waterfowl; people have bred for those fat deposits for 
millennia. I'm fairly sure this bird is at least mostly greylag, and 
very, very well fed.

> The other goose looks like it could be the offspring of the first
> goose and a Canada!

Ain't he a hoot! I think you've nailed the breeding exactly right.

Geese and ducks are sufficiently, ah, undiscriminating - and successful 
- to bring the whole question of species identity as I learned it in 
high school biology into question. We draw lines, but the real world 
doesn't care about them all that much. (And this summer on a birding 
Elderhostel in Churchill, Manitoba, I learned that polar bears and 
grizzly bears are interfertile, and don't mule out. Scary thought, that....)

> Several people have reported a greater white-fronted goose recently
> at Lake Merritt, but neither of these geese seems to me to be one.

I haven't seen a greater white-fronted goose yet this year, but they do 
occasionally show up. Their conformation is much like that of the Canada 
geese. If it ain't streamlined, it ain't wild.

Good birding!

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