Green Island Wetlands, Greater White-fronted Geese, Snow Geese, Ross's Geese (far right)
A relatively warm Easter weekend lies behind us. I hope you had a great holiday, although the sun wasn’t out much here in eastern Iowa. On Saturday I introduced the Green Island Wetlands to part of the family. Well, the seven months old twins probably didn’t care too much about where we went…😉
My excitement went up when we saw a flock of Greater White-fronted Geese. My guess was about 400-500. They have still a long way to go before they reach their breeding grounds in northern Canada. With them were also about 50 Snow Geese, the largest number I have seen so far in the Green Island Wetlands. Looking closer at my pictures at home I found out that at least two blue-morph Ross’s Geese were among as well. This was a first sighting for me! If a more experienced birder than me has some other ideas about my identification efforts, I always appreciate your help and suggestions!
An overcast isn’t really helpful if you like to reveal the colors of birds in a photo but it definitely helped with this shot. This would have been a very high contrast scene if the sun was out, but with the overcast it allowed to show some detail in all of the different species, without tweaking much of the photo in post process.