NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:

Birding has been good lately at Carr Park. This pleasant little park at Springdale Street and Heil Avenue has a lovely pond with a wild island and is surrounded by lawn, picnic tables and a number of trees.

Vic and I subscribe to the Orange County rare bird alert, a listserve that sends out a weekly announcement of rare birds that have been sighted in the county (groups.yahoo .com/group/OrCoRBA). Vic is a frequent contributor, as he is generally out birding two or three times a week. I’m a far more infrequent contributor because I don’t go birding as often, and if I do go, I’m not as likely as he is to recognize a rare visitor to our area. This past week was an exception.

The rare bird alert had posted a recent sighting at Carr Park of a brant, which is a fairly rare species of goose. Brants are small geese, nearly all black, with a series of white lines under the chin along the throat. Brants often hang out with Canada geese and can be seen on occasion at Bolsa Chica.

Vic and I have noticed a number of Canada geese at Carr Park recently. Nationwide, populations of Canada geese are expanding and Canada geese have been wintering at the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge for many years now. As their numbers grow, they’ve been venturing outside the refuge more often. It is now fairly common to see Canada geese at the various lakes and ponds in Huntington Beach. The brant at Carr Park was supposed to be with the Canada geese.

I put my camera in the car and drove over to look for the brant. I didn’t find it. However, I did find an even rarer species, a cackling goose.

At one time, these stubby-billed geese were thought to be simply smaller subspecies of Canada geese. However, recent genetic studies have shown that cackling geese are a distinct species. They can be divided into four subspecies: Taverner’s, Richardson’s, Aleutian and cackling. Telling these four subspecies apart is beyond my skill level. At one time, the Aleutian cackling goose was endangered, but the population recovered sufficiently for the bird to be delisted in 2001.

Cackling geese breed along the Arctic Circle farther to the north and west than Canada geese. Most cackling geese prefer to nest along streams and ponds in the tundra, but the Aleutian and Richardson’s form nest on cliffs and steep rocky slopes. Cackling geese generally winter in Washington, Oregon, the Central Valley of California, the Gulf Coast of Texas, lower New Mexico and down into Mexico. It’s pretty unusual to find one in Huntington Beach.

I took a few photographs of the cackling goose and headed home. Then I proudly posted my sighting on the rare bird alert.

Vic was interested enough to go check out my sighting the next day. But he didn’t find either a brant or a cackling goose. He saw two Ross’s geese. These are smaller versions of snow geese, and also a separate species. Ross’s geese have stubbier bills than snow geese and generally lack the black “grin patch” at the base of the bill of snow geese.

Like snow geese, Ross’s geese come in white and blue forms, with white being far more common. The so-called blue goose is actually dark gray. Ross’s geese nest in a limited region of the Arctic and winter mainly in the California Central Valley. We usually see Ross’s geese on field trips to the Salton Sea, but again, finding one in Huntington Beach is pretty unusual.

Although the population of Ross’s geese is small, their numbers are growing. Ross’s geese have been expanding their range eastward since the 1950s. As they do so, they come into more frequent contact with snow geese and hybridize with them more frequently. Interestingly, Ross’s geese goslings can be either yellow or gray when they hatch. But when they get their adult feathers, both yellow and gray chicks become all white with black primary feathers.

Vic posted the sighting of the Ross’s geese on the rare bird alert. Like the Canada geese, they are probably wintering at the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge and just visiting Carr Park for the day. They’re probably just as likely to pop up at Huntington Lake in Central Park.

In addition to these wild geese at Carr Park, there are also some domestic geese.

Vic says they’re mostly Chinese geese, a species that was domesticated from the wild swan goose in Central Siberia more than 2,000 years ago. They make fine “watchdogs” as they will honk aggressively at anything strange.

Chinese geese have a large knob at the base of their bill and may be either brown and white or all white. You can see them at Carr Park and Huntington Lake in Central Park.

Other domestic geese are descended from European greylag geese. Interestingly, domestic geese develop large fat pads on the lower part of their body.

This puts their body so off balance that it changes their posture.

While wild geese have a horizontal appearance when walking, domestic geese have a heads-up, more aggressive appearance. That aggression isn’t all looks.

When you run out of food for them, they can become quite irritated, so be careful around them.

That remind us: You can enjoy the ducks and geese in our parks, but don’t throw food into the water.

It just decays and causes outbreaks of avian botulism.

We can hardly wait to see what pops up next at Carr Park.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].