Hybrid geese at Boggart Hole Clough

At Boggart Hole Clough, on the Loiterers Resistance Movement's September day trip, i saw two geese that were obviously hybrids between the introduced Canada geese (Branta canadensis) and feral "barnyard" geese of Greylag Goose (Anser anser) descent. (The Greylag is the ancestor of most domestic geese, although some breeds also have ancestry from the Swan Goose (Anser cygnoides), which produces fully fertile hybrids with the Greylag. Hybrids between Anser geese and Branta geese, such as Canada x Greylag, are usually sterile.)







As can be seen, while these hybrids are most likely siblings originating from a single brood of eggs, they are very varied in appearance, with one bird taking more strongly after the Canada parent and the other taking more strongly after the Greylag, but both showing features clearly intermediate between the two.

The 2 hybrids were associating with a Canada and a large, grey and white domestic Greylag - presumably their parents (I have no idea which is the mother and which the father, or indeed how to determine the sex of geese in general, as unlike most ducks they seem not to show much, if any, obvious sexual dimorphism). I attempted to get a photo of all 4 together, but the light conditions somewhat defeated my camera, meaning that the best i could get was this:



(I didn't even notice the duck in the middle of the group when i took the photo, which is also a (sort-of) hybrid - a Manky Mallard, descended from interbreeding between wild Mallards and domestic ducks (both Anas platyrhynchos, so a similar situation to the wild Greylag and domestic goose)...)

The bleached-out white blur is a large, piebald domestic Greylag goose, very similar in appearance to this one (photographed at Platt Fields Park):



I have quite a few other photos of hybrid geese, which i will put in another post - the majority of other individuals of this (very variable) combination, but also a couple of much more unusual ones - watch this space...