Out-of-State Musings on rarities and geese

I returned late last night from a holiday weekend outing to the OR-WA coastal area with Dave Trochlell and my son Skylar. As I've mentioned before, we were fortunate enough to see the Redwing and Baikal Teal on Saturday. On Sunday we returned for a return engagement with the Redwing and had wonderful, scope-filling looks multiple times! It is truly an amazing bird...primarily because of rarity, to say nothing of the distance traveled to take up winter residence in Olympia, WA.

We did not visit British Columbia as planned, primarily because of weather. (Somehow we managed to miss the major ice storm that hit the Portland area and then the Columbia River Gorge on Saturday night and Monday.) In going over to the coast between Astoria and Tillamook, we saw an almost unheard of albino large gull, that possibly may have been a Glaucous-winged Gull. The first time that either Dave or I have seen such a creature...not a hint of anything but pure white on the plumage. Perhaps more on this bird at a later time. Also, near Pacific City there is a limited small wintering population of "Aleutian" Cackling Goose (Branta hutchinsii leucopareia) that was only "discovered" in 1979 breeding on the Semidi Islands (on Kiliktagik Island) and seems to morphologically be somewhere between "Taverner's" Cackling Goose (mainland breeding) and "pure" "Aleutian" Cackling Goose breeding on the Aleutian chain. On its wintering grounds this bird has the unique habit of feeding in the pastures around Pacific City during the day and then moving out into the coastal surf area to roost at night. Good pictures of this sub-subspecies (or perhaps new subspecies) are a project for President's Day weekend!

NOTE TO ALL: Also, after seeing many "Taverner's" Cackling Goose (Branta hutchinsii taverneri) and some accompanying "Lesser" Canada Goose (Branta canadensis parvipes)...and taking some good pictures of parvipes at Ann Morrison Memorial Park today, I am going to tackle the difficult issue of differentiating these two (formerly both "Lesser" Canada Goose) as an addition to the growing goose id pieces on www.IdahoBirds.net . Especially frustrating to many is the problem of "darker" parvipes "Lesser" types with a small "neck ring" below the black stocking vs. darker toned plumage taverneri. Hopefully I can get this written out and posted with pictures in the next few days.