Snow Goose? Leucistic Greylag? Domestic Duck? (1 Viewer)

[pjacobs]

Hi all,

I saw three large white geese this morning at my local wetland in North Yorkshire, UK. The past week or so there are have been over 2000 migrating Greylags present on the water. This morning I saw three large white geese among the crowds, one by itself among the Greylags, and the other two (pictured) together. They were all about the size of Greylags.

I come here often and it's very normal to see large flocks of Greylags, and occasionally Pink Footed, Egyptian, Barnacle, and White Fronted Geese. especially in the autumn, but I've never seen white geese. If they are domestic they definitely aren't locals.

Are these snow geese? Or something else?

 

[Welsh Peregrine]

Domestic type Greylags.

 

[pjacobs]

Domestic type Greylags.

Thanks. How can you tell?

 

[Butty]

Note bill-size/shape.

 

[Welsh Peregrine]

Essentially they are the same shape and size as greylags; only the colour pattern is different.

 

[KC Foggin]

Greylags for me.

 

[Joern Lehmhus]

Orange bill and orange legs are wrong for snow goose (Compare with greylag bill on the left ) , they have mainly pinkish legs and pinkish bill with larger grinning patch and black around the cuttingedges of the mandibles covering the grinning patch.

Shape of tertials and greater coversts is also different in snow goose , they are longer and pointier .

Compare with this white snow goose

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/assets/photo/295417571-480px.jpg

your birds are typical greylag goose in these respects - only the color is off- so that might be due to a genetic miutation in a wild bird but could also be due to a cross weith a white domestic (greylag) goose.