Snow Geese at Dead Creek the Dark Morph(Blue Goose) pt 1

After a great start to the day at home birding and the weather forecast calling for rain on Tuesday I decided to make a run to Dead Creek in Addision Vt see the Snow geese. There was plenty of hawk activity to watch along the way, 7 Red-tailed hawks 3 Northern Harriers and 2 Rough-legged hawks all hunting in fields along Rt 22a and Rt 17. At the Farrell access to the Dead Creek a fellow birder told me about all the Pipits around the first bend in the road. Pipits were all over and became bird # 255 in state and # 293 over all on my Birding Big Year list. However it was the Snow geese that would provide the most fun this day because there were many Dark morph Snow geese, more than I have ever seen at Dead Creek. Here are some of the photos from yesterday of the (Blue Goose) Dark morph .

What was interesting to me was even though the Dark morph geese were mixed in with the white Snow geese they stayed together for the most part. Meaning that if you located a Dark morph adult there was usually a couple of Dark juvenile not far behind. Sometimes you would see both parents, other times you could only find one, but juveniles always stayed close to the parents even flying you pick them out in a crowd. If you go keep an eye out for the Dark morph (Blue Goose) Snow geese and bring your Sibley's guide for some ID-ing fun. There was and estimate of 5000 plus Snow geese there on Monday 20th of October and more Dark morph geese then I have seen at Dead Creek Addision Vermont in the past few years.

Thanks for visiting BFO's
Peter Manship

story and images copyright Peter manship

I will post part two soon, Snow Geese photos of what you might find on a typical day at Dead Creek WMA viewing the Snow geese.