12/8-12/11

On thursday, december 8th, I was getting a bite to eat in between classes, and while leaving campus drove by the tannery dam in case something worth stopping was there. Right away, a spotted a cackling goose among a very large number of canada geese. The cackling goose is formerly included in the canada goose family. This new species is smaller with a rounder head and shorter neck and bill. there are four subspecies of cackling geese, "leucopareia" and "hutchinsii" have a white band around the base of thier necks, the smaller "minima" and "taverneri" lack this white band. (iBird mobile app for ipod)  When I spotted the cackling goose, I pulled into a parking spot and grabbed my camera. When I turned my camera on, a message saying "no sd card" popped up on the monitor... I checked the sd card bay, and saw that the sd card was there, so I pulled it out, plugged it back in, and tried again. The message appeared on the monitor a second time. I removed the sd card from my camera to find that sometime between uplaoding pictures from my last post, and putting the card back into my camera, the card had split in half on one side... This card has over 1200 photos on it, so I was upset to say the least, and of course I didn't have a backup card with me. I left the tannery dam, forgetting about my stomach and headed for staples to get three new sd cards. (That's a lesson learned!!!!) When I got back to the tannery dam a half hour later, thankfully the goose was still there. Here are a few of the photos that I got of the cackling goose.

 Cackling goose among canada geese

Cackling goose among canada geese

(note smaller body size, shorter bill and neck, and smaller rounder head compared to that of a canada goose)

 Cackling goose preening among canada geese

Cackling goose preening among canada geese

Cackling goose among canada geese

I went back to the tannery a day later between class and work to see if the goose was still there, and got a few more photos of the bird. Here is one of the photos of the cackling goose, and a photo of canada geese preening and resting at the tannery dam.

cackling goose and canada geese

canada geese resting and preening

This past October I happened to see two cackling geese at the tannery, and was able to get some photos of them. The two cackling geese that I photographed last October are shown below, the subspecies "minima" and the larger subspecies "taverneri" are shown.

two subspecies of cackling geese, centered "taverneri" on the left, "minima" on the right among canada geese

On Saturday the 10th, I went for a walk around my property in Brockport, and heard the familiar "eng eng" or "yank yank" nasal call of a nuthatch. Thankfully I was wearing camoflauge and could get up close to the two birds foraging in the grapevines. I believe that I have reached my goal of getting a "good" photo of a nuthatch before the end of winter!

white-breasted nuthatch

white-breasted nuthatch

white-breasted nuthatch

white-breasted nuthatch

(note the enlongated back toe, helping the bird cling to the sides of trees while upside down)

Yesterday, Sunday the 11th, afterwork I decided to run to the DuBois Reservoir to spend some time looking for waterfowl. Not so much luck, a few canda geese, ring-necked ducks, and mallards. The water is starting to freeze over and I believe the days of watching waterfowl and waterbirds are running out for the year. But, I suppose that just leaves some time for chasing winter resident birds!

ice on the DuBois Reservoir

ice on the DuBois Reservoir