Didja know most of the “canada geese” we see in Washington state are actually cackling geese, a smaller related species with fucken identical coloration? There are two main tells: size, including a seemingly shorter neck they keep tucked closer to the body, and size of the group. Cacklers mob deep. Average group size of the canada geese I’ve seen is three to seven, average for cacklers six to a dozen or more. I feel like these groups can come together and break apart with minimal fuss, and the larger the environment they’re in – say, a wide open field vs. the margins of a road – the larger the group.
It’s a good look for a beast. Drab brown-grey body with an almost scale-like look where the pale margins of feathers create a pattern, contrasted with a head in full-on orca colors. I have heard geese are violent and will mess you up, but I’d like to pick one up and hug it. They’re one of those birds. They look squeezably soft.
Geese are famous for shitting damn everywhere, slimy green-brown-grey. I’ve read they make up for having less room in their guts than cows by eating their own feces to give the nutrients a second pass through the pipe. Yum. There’s supposedly only one species of bird that is functionally a ruminant, which is the hoatzin of Central and South America, so plant-eating emeffs gotta make do.
Still, respect. Pretty animals make the world a nicer place, if a dookier one.
My question tho, do they really cackle? I don’t think so. Shit just sounds like the usual honking and squonking. A proper cackle is the province of the Halloween witch. Halloween witches say Ree Hee Hee, with optional additional Hees, like chickadees have a variable number of Dees. Cryptkeepers are closely related organisms, but you can tell the difference if you listen closely. Their call is more like Nyee Hee Hee, again with the optional gratuity of Hees.
There are birds that are proper cacklers. I would’ve named these guys something else. Junior canadas, maybe.
Happy Halloween everybody. It’s time.
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Old style Canada geese are paraphyletic. Wikipedia presents a cladogram in which barnacle geese are this sister group to cackling geese, with Canada geese as the outgroup. This cladogram has nene geese outside Canada geese, but I recall seeing papers which had nene geese nested within Canada geese. (I thought that this was why cackling geese had been split from Canada geese.) The Wikipedia article on nene implies but does not explicitly state that nene (and two extinct Hawaiian species) are nested in the Canada goose clade.
Where I am in the northeastern USA, we don’t have cackling geese but we do have plenty of Canada geese. Around here at least, Canada geese will form larger groups – I’ve seen dozens together in open fields near lakes and ponds. We may have a different subspecies here than the one in the northwestern US. I remember my Dad used to work in an office building right next to a lake, and Canada geese were common there. Unfortunately, so were their droppings, so you always had to be careful where you stepped!
I’ve been chased by a domestic goose, wings out, hissing, running full pelt at us. We didn’t hang around to see if it was really a soft cuddler. In my case I was taught young to be wary of swans, and a gander coming at you full pelt seemed almost as dangerous.
thanks for the goosely goods everybody!