Bean Goose Identification (1 Viewer)

[ELU]

Hey!

I am struggling with this Bean Goose sp. I have seen yesterday in eastern Austria with hundreds of Tundra Bean and Greylag Geese. Taiga Bean Goose? odd Tundra Bean Goose?
Sorry for the bad pictures!

Happy to hear your thoughts!

Elias

 

[Harrybongo]

Hi. By the orange marking on the bill, one of them could be a Taiga bean goose (fabalis), hard to tell though! I can also see a couple of White-fronted, and maybe a Greylag as well?

 

[Stephen Dunstan]

Hi. By the orange marking on the bill, one of them could be a Taiga bean goose (fabalis), hard to tell though! I can also see a couple of White-fronted, and maybe a Greylag as well?

That's why ELU is asking, whether that's a Taiga or a Tundra, and they've mentioned that there were hundreds of Greylag present.

I can't add much from these pics, but I can see why you've queried it. It does look quite long necked but hard to judge size in water.

 

[Joern Lehmhus]

Agree it is hard, but I also see that as a potential Taiga
...but photo quality makes this difficult.
(generally one also has to exclude also bean x greater whitefront hybrids, but here bill pattern and color seems better for Taiga)

 

[ELU]

Thank you for all your replies! On the lake were plenty of "normal" looking Tundra Bean Geese. So far I think this one is also a Tundra Bean Goose but a very odd one. In a flock of Taigas in Sweden it would probably not stand out...
I just checked pictures on ebird of (south)eastern european countries, most of them also look a lot like Tundra Bean Geese in my opinion. Lot's of work with these to be done...

The pictures are screenshots from a digiscoped video. If someone wants to dive deeper I am happy to send a wetransfer link by dm.

 

[ELU]

I tried a few times to find the bird again this week, so far without success...

The birds shows a bit of a grinning patch but to my knowledge some fabalis can also show those. For a Taiga in a rarity context, I fear it's simply not straight forward enough...