Mital Patel's recent lovely post of a Greylag goose in the Avian Critique forum encouraged me to post an image here - not because it's a good image, but because it illustrates a story. Greylag geese are common in Europe and Asia, and feral in the UK. But this bird, that showed up in a flock of migrant Canada Geese recently in a gravel pit in Nova Scotia, has been extensively and thoroughly scrutinized, and is felt to be wild - and just one of less than 4 or 5 records for N.America. It's probably a 1st winter bird, and is of the nominate anser race. One of the Canadas in the flock had a yellow neck collar, with numbers readable by 'scope, and it turned out to have been banded in 2008 in Greenland, so it may be traveling with that flock.
Several keen birders have made lengthy journeys from all over the continent to add it to their lists.
The bird has at times been hard to find, and has given rise to the favorite expression of Nova Scotia birders recently - ""I'm off on a wild goose chase" (LOL).
Neat bird. Having sat on the records committees for NJ and PA, I can attest to how tough it is when trying to weigh the cases for and against the probability that any rare waterfowl being an escapee. A bird like this in Nova Scotia traveling with a known Greenland bird is probably about as good as it gets.
Of course if the Greylag had been wearing the Greenland neck collar...
One man's "dirt bird" is another man's "lifer"
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