Leucistic Canada Goose? Or some sort of Hybrid? S.E. Mass., USA (1 Viewer)

[Fmfoxx]

Hello. I assume it is the former, not the latter, but just making sure.

Pics taken this afternoon.

Thanks,

Martin

 

[Alexander Stöhr]

Hello Martin,

I agree with you, its an leucistic Canada Goose without any visible signs of hybridisation:

• shape of the bird and shape of the the all-black bill is very good for a Canada Goose
• although difficult (at least) to judge, the left leg (whats visible of it, upper tibia and foot?) seems (muddy-) blackish
• shape of the white blaze on the face is very good for a Canada Goose (learned that here on BF from Jörn. Thanks again!)
• all-black tail and lack of paler/greyer greater coverts might well be counted as a feature against the most common Grelag x Canada hybrid. A few but far from all has one of those features. Yes, its better to skip it! But it can work the other way round.

 

[KC Foggin]

I'm going with Leucistic as well.

 

[Fmfoxx]

Thank you all. Interesting that only the "color" black is reduced on this bird. The browns remain unaffected.

 

[stevethehydra]

I've seen a few different types of leucistic Canada geese, none exactly like this, but on those with white spotting or streaking on the head/neck (that I have seen close up), I have noticed that the "abnormal" white is a slightly but noticeably colder/purer white than the "normal" white face pattern. This seems to be true in these photos. I think that this bird looks like an extreme version of that type in which the white has almost completely covered the normally-black parts.

In contrast, those Canada geese I have seen with paler-than-normal brown parts have usually had the black remain unaffected.

The thing that seems oddest to me about this bird is how short the neck looks, but maybe this is a local/subspecific variation thing?