Some grey and a little silver

[Smalma]

Stumbled across a interesting goose today. Something you don't see every day in western Washington.

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Curt

[D3Smartie]

VERY NICE!!!:thumb:

[Gary Thompson]

Look like snow geese to me.
A good friend chases them down in central Oregon.
I found them to be pretty tasty.

[Smalma]

Gary -
Right you are though the dark one is a Blue goose (blue color phase of snow geese). While "blues" are a common bird in the central flyway they are extremely rare in western Washington. Recently a small handful (2 or 3 a year) are seen mixed in with the large flocks of snows wintering at the mouth of the Skagit (out of as many as 100,000 birds).

That blue is the first that I had ever seen and while I'm sure others had been taken I have never heard of one. To have the bird being banded makes it doublely rare - maybe a one in a million.

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[Kaari Dahl]

A banded blue... That is very cool- I bet it's even more rare than 1 in a million.

[Itchy Dog]

Very cool, Smalma. You gonna submit the band number and get the history on the bird? Could be one for the taxidermist!

[Smalma]

Send the info in but the data had not been entered from this year's banding efforts so will have to wait for a well to see where it was banded.

Our snows come from Wrangle Island (Russia Siberia). The banded snows I or my partners have shot in the past have all had the same prefix number and were from Wrangle. The blue had a different prefix so we are guessing that it may not be a Wrangle bird. Maybe for Alaska's north slope or the Canadian artic. Regardless the information will be interesting.

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[spanishfly]

Cool! We use to hunt snow, ross and blue geese on my Grandpas land in NM along the Rio Grande Valley this time of year. Looks like your Blue got lost somewhere along the way…

[Gary Thompson]

I thought the blue was just a young snow.
That's cool about learning the banding info.
I have heard snow geese live a long time compared to other birds (well unless they run into some steel shot).

[Smalma]

Some of the snow goose band information had birds living well into their twenties.

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Curt