Banded Goose
As well as adding Cackling Goose to my life list, and my first ever four goose day, today stands out as the first time I’ve read a band in the field. Of course when they’re this close and obvious it’s no great achievement:
Normally you need a spotting scope, and a lot of luck to read bands in the field; or you need to recapture the bird. This band could be read with the naked eye. I reported it to the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center Bird Banding Laboratory. They’re the central location for reporting all banded birds in North America.
Bird banding is used to track bird migration and movement. Bands were first used on hunting falcons in Europe, at least as far back as the sixteenth century. John James Audubon was the first to use it in North America. Two hundred years ago he tied bits of yarn to phoebes to prove that the same birds returned to a site every spring.
This is actually an interesting siting. The collar seen here is orange with four characters. This style of collar is used on the Mississippi flyway. On the local Atlantic flyway, a different three character “bib-type” collar that better resists icing is used. Thus this bird was banded quite far from here, and must have been moving East-West instead of North-South like geese normally do.
This is the first time I’ve seen a banded goose in Prospect Park. I’ll keep an eye out for this in the future to see if it sticks around, or if any other lost geese show up. :-)
February 19th, 2006 at 8:34 AM
[…] Friday I spotted H7H6 in Prospect Lake again. As you may recall, H7H6 is the banded goose I first saw in Prospect Lake on January 29, over two weeks earlier. I hadn’t seen it again since, though I had looked for it. I assumed it had flown on. Now it’s back. […]
March 6th, 2006 at 12:16 PM
[…] I’ve received some more information about H6H7, the banded Canada Goose I first spotted in Prospect Park on January 29 and have since relocated twice. It seems he (I now know that it’s a male) was banded July 12, 2005 near St Paul l Emite (St. Paul l’Ermite?) in Quebec. I’m not quite sure where that is, possibly somewhere between Montreal and Quebec City. Based on his age when banded, he was hatched in 2004 or earlier. […]
June 29th, 2008 at 1:56 PM
Here at North Shore at Lake Marion, South Carolina, I have spotted a band (D85J). Recently a flock of approximately 60 Canadian Geese have taken residence here. Magnificent they are!
This area has over 300 species of birds. The adjoining land to North Shore at Lake Marion is the Santee Wildlife Refuge.
Carl Walters, Sales Executive, North Shore, Lake Marion, SC
June 29th, 2008 at 2:47 PM
Need to correct the numbers on the bands of the previous report on Canadian Geese.
It was 085J not D85J. The three bands are 016J, 031J, and 085J.
Took a digital picture and zoomed in on my computer to verify.
These are silver with black numbers.
January 11th, 2010 at 7:44 AM
[…] found neck banded Canada Geese before, and occasional leg bands on other species (though I’ve never been able to fully read those); […]