[Maine-birds] Northern Maine Birds: Pink-footed Goose, Collins Pond Caribou

Though we had a slow start this morning, the Aroostook Birders "Wild Goose Chase" field trip had a big ending...  

Starting at Collins Pond in Caribou, we began the morning watching the Canada Geese depart from the pond and head to the fields to feed.  Some handsome male Green-winged Teal, Hooded Mergansers, a few late Greater Yellowlegs and a Pectoral Sandpiper were also enjoyed here.

We hoped to relocate the honkers out in the farmland, but struggled to find them at any of their favored haunts. We eventually located geese in a couple spots, but viewing conditions were less than ideal.

After a couple hours of winding through the wide open parts of Limestone and northern Fort Fairfield, we encountered a massive flock of Canada Geese as they erupted from a grain field on the Hardison Road in Caribou.  We were able to distinguish some Snow Geese from the 1000+ Canada Geese, but the birds were heading away from our vantage point so we followed them back towards Collins Pond. 

On returning to the pond, we were treated to a great mass of roosting geese including the group of Snow Geese.  While looking at these, we also discovered a county-first Pink-footed Goose!

This is a smaller brown-headed goose that has only showed up in the state a few times before...most recently last spring.  These are native to Europe and nest in Scandanavia, Iceland and Greenland.  The bird was a lifer for most of the group and a great way to end the morning in the field.  

The bird was vocal and gave a harsh squawk periodically.  It even showed us its bubblegum pink legs a couple times!  Many of us were able to photograph the goose since it was as close as 150 feet away. I put a few digiscoped images on my Flickr photo stream here:

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/71911844@N04/10366259456/in/photostream/

Going to be hard to beat...

Good birding!

Bill

--
Bill Sheehan
Woodland, Aroostook Co., Maine
http://northernmainebirds.blogspot.com/

--
--
Maine birds mailing list
maine-birds@googlegroups.com
http://groups.google.com/group/maine-birds
https://sites.google.com/site/birding207
 
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Maine birds" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to maine-birds+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.