Geese

I do much of my training along a paved bikepath along the Illinois River. One of the sub-paths is nicknamed the "Goose Loop" because all of the geese the congregate there. Most of the time they are ok, though they will hiss if you get too close to their young, and once I've been chased.

I like them anyway. Most are Canadian geese, and there are a few snow geese as well. Lately, I've noticed some geese with strange markings; they have the white faces of snow geese, the coloring of the Canadian, and a bill that is somewhat midway. I wondered if these were hybrids.

I did some searching on the internet and found this interesting page:
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/domgeese.htm.
I can recommend it; it has good photos and lots of information. These photos are from there but accurately describe what I see.
Here we see the Canadian geese with a hybrid in the middle. The hybrids I saw had darker coloring in the body, but the same bill and head coloring as the one in the middle.



Here we see some domestic geese; the white ones are commonly called "snow geese".

Here we see a family out for a walk. I see lots of sights like this. In some ways, the geese are smarter than we are; after all, they don't seem to worry about things like color or markings.