More hybrid geese: white Canada x domestic, Birmingham

I first saw this goose in Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham in February 2008: as i was walking towards the lake near the Midlands Arts Centre, i saw a large male Mute Swan, wings puffed up in a huge threat posture, chase after and viciously attack an off-white goose, which then took off wildly honking, accompanied by a Canada Goose, and circled the lake several times calling loudly. I wonder whether the swan attacked that particular goose because of its colouring, which approximated that of a young Mute Swan at about the age when the parents would be driving them away from the next to live independently (mostly white, with some light greyish patches), or perhaps because it fell into some kind of swan version of the Uncanny Valley - just too similar too, yet too different from, a swan for the swan to feel disturbed or threatened by it in a way that it wasn't by the "normal" Canada geese...



After that incident, presumably the goose left Cannon Hill Park, but then in 2009, i saw the same bird at Swanshurst Park, a couple of miles away, accompanying a small group of Canada geese. While there were also resident swans at Swanshurst Park, they didn't seem bothered by the goose...






(while i'm not 100% sure this is the same bird, i believe it probably is: the difference in colour between the 2008 and 2009 photos is mostly due to the 2009 photos being taken with a better camera and less overexposed - the 2008 photo bleaches out the goose to look whiter than it is)

I wasn't sure at first whether this goose was actually a "half-Canada" or not - it was the same colour as lots of domestic geese of Greylag descent, but the pink (rather than orange) bill and legs, as well as the relatively Canada-like head and neck proportions (long, fairly thin neck, smallish head and much slimmer bill than most Greylag-types) led me to conclude that this individual must be a hybrid between a Canada and a white domestic goose.

Compare for example this very similarly coloured feral domestic Greylag-type (from Platt Fields Park in Manchester) - note the shorter, thicker neck, bigger head and much deeper, orange (not pink) bill:



Searching for online images, i also found these very similar white or mostly-white Canada/domestic hybrids:

Flickr 1
Flickr 2
Flickr 3
BirdForum 1
BirdForum 2
Harry Lehto
DV Info (the last 2 accompanied by "non-white" Canada/domestic hybrids that appear to have been their siblings)

showing that this isn't such a rare combination (although they are probably often mistaken for "ordinary" white domestic geese). One characteristic i've noticed about Canada x domestic goose hybrids is that they seem to either be solitary or attach themselves to groups of Canada geese, even if they are also domestic/Greylag geese around and they look more like domestic/Greylag geese than Canadas.

Next, some more "typical" looking (insomuch as such varied hybrids can be said to ever have a "typical" appearance) Canada x Greylag hybrids.