By Darren Johnson
Campus News
I’ve received various reports of a unique goose in my town. It may be an ultra-rare Taiga Bean Goose, but cold be an also-rare Tundra Bean Goose.
The consensus so far is it’s a Taiga (which have a longer bill, usually with more yellow on it). These come from Northern Europe, and one hasn’t been identified in this state, or even anywhere in the Northeastern USA, before.
Birders have descended upon Rock Street Park in Upstate’s Greenwich, NY, where the rare goose is hanging out with common Canada Geese along the Battenkill.
(Bean Geese are known to mingle with other types of geese.)
Village clerk Jane Dowling alerted me by phone and said that numerous cars with out-of-state plates were seen parked in the area, with people trying to get this first-ever glimpse at the bird.
I’ve been asking around. Here is the best photo I’ve gotten, from Jeff Nadler (www.jnphoto.net), a professional photographer from Burnt Hills:
I asked him if he was a birder and if he’d ever gotten such a shot before. Jeff replied: “This is a first recorded sighting for New York State and have never birded northern Europe, where it lives. The most notable distinguishing marks are the orange feet and bill and a subtle white line along the side. I am more a bird photographer than birder but it was still exciting to see such a rarity.”
I’d first been alerted to the bird earlier in the morning by the hometown paper I own’s “Outdoors Tomorrow” columnist Bob Henke, who wrote this as a sidebar to his usual column that he had submitted by email (he’s in the “Tundra” camp):
“I would be remiss if I did not report the tundra bean goose, which has been in the Hudson River in Fort Miller. This goose, a native of the arctic areas of Eurasia, is extremely common in its typical habitat and yet quite rare on this hemisphere. One was sighted on Saratoga Lake in 2021, traveling with a group of snow geese. My suspicion is, this is the same bird, just happily setting up house-keeping with the snows.”
I’d texted one of the bird watchers, who had blogged about the sighting. Zach Schwartz-Weinstein, a scholar and professor who trekked up here from downstate, is in the Taiga camp. He replied to my questions:
DJ: Why are so many people interested in this bird?
ZSW: The goose is a Taiga Bean-Goose (Anser fabalis) a species native to Scandinavia and the northern areas of Eastern Europe. This is the first record of this species for New York, and the first record for the east coast of the United States. It is probably the same individual that spent part of November and December in Matane, Quebec, which was the first record for Eastern North America. This individual was first sighted in New York at Saratoga State Boat Launch on December 31 by a birder named Karen Randall. It was seen there again two days later, and then went missing for a week, until John McKay rediscovered it at Fort Miller on the 9th. Since then it visited Northumberland and has spent the last 48 hours in Greenwich, moving between the river and cornfields.
Besides the extreme rarity of this species in this hemisphere, it’s also notable that it was first seen at the exact same spot that the first New York record of its sister species, the Tundra Bean-Goose, was seen four years ago.
DJ: So is it in fact a Taiga Bean Goose, or a Tundra Bean Goose?
ZSW: The final determination on the ID will be made by the New York State Avian Records Committee (NYSARC). This bird’s bill shape and bill color, as well as head and neck shape, all point to Taiga over Tundra (which is also extremely rare in the US.). Compared to the 2021 Tundra Bean-Goose, this bird has a longer bill with much more orange pigmentation on it, and a much weaker “grin patch” on the bill. (Tundra Bean-Geese have shorter, darker bills, with limited orange, and a much more pronounced “grin patch.”)
And that’s where were are right now.
Keep your distance from this first-of-a-kind visitor to Greenwich. Keep your dogs away from the area. Let the professionals with the big zoom lenses get the photos. We’ll post them here as we get them.
Facebook Comments