More hybrid geese: various Canada x domestic types

Here are a few more probable Canada x Greylag/Domestic Goose hybrids, from various places around Greater Manchester...

(I'm not sure if such hybrids are particularly common in the Manchester area, or if i've just noticed them more since i've lived around here - the white one in the last post was the only hybrid goose i ever saw in 3 years in Birmingham, and these are all from the last 6 months. There do seem to be a lot more feral domestic (anser and/or cygnoides descended) geese around in Manchester though, whereas the few that i saw around Birmingham tended not to be on the same reservoirs/ponds/lakes/etc as the much-commoner-there Canadas.)





This one was at Etherow Country Park near Stockport. Notably, there were at least 3 distinct groups of geese on the reservoir it was on - Canadas, grey/brown domestic geese (most of which had some obvious Swan Goose ancestry, although they were probably mixed with Greylag over several generations), and some extremely large white domestic geese, which i believe were probably a "pure" domestic breed such as Embdens. (first pic below shows 2 of the Embdens, with a Swan Goose-type - which, for scale, is itself about the size of a typical Canada Goose, and the others 2 of the Swan Goose types...)




The hybrid seemed to be solitary, whether by choice or because it was rejected by the other groups of geese. (I'm still not actually certain this bird is part-Canada rather than just an unusual domestic Greylag x domestic Swan Goose cross, as its head and bill look pretty Greylag-like, but from discussions on Flickr and BirdForum, black tail feathers show Branta parentage, and Canada x domestic Swan Goose hybrids tend to have a lot of white on their heads/necks.)





This one, from Heaton Park, is similar but more obviously a Canada Goose hybrid. On the boating lake it was on there were families of both Canadas and wild-type Greylags with young goslings, and 2 "mixed" family groups that seemed to each consist of a pair of Canadas with goslings and a single Greylag with goslings of its own that had joined up with them - it wouldn't surprise me if the goslings in such mixed groups were likely to pair up with each other and produce hybrids in the future. There was also a large group of white/piebald domestic Greylags with somewhat older goslings. Note the pink legs and part orange, part pink bill.



This black-billed one from a boating lake in Stalybridge appears to be a Canada x domestic Swan Goose hybrid, according to the discussion in the Flickr "hybrid birds" photo-pool (see below).

In the "hybrid birds" pool on Flickr there are many more examples of Canada x dometic goose hybrids, which are very varied - these are subdivided into probable Canada x domestic Greylag, probable Canada x domestic Swan Goose, and probable Canada x domestic with both Greylag and Swan Goose ancestry, although i'm not sure how reliably distinguishable those categories actually are.

A few more good examples of Canada x Greylag/domestic goose hybrids can be seen here, here, here and here,.

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...

The Turtle of Alexandra Park

On the Loiterers Resistance Movement trip to Boggart Hole Clough last weekend, i heard that there were supposedly "turtles" in the "boating lake" (really more of a duck pond) in Alexandra Park - so, the next time i happened to be nearby, i decided to go and have a look...

I wasn't really expecting to see anything, as i'd been there a few times previously to see what kind of birds frequented the "lake" (and once seen a Little Grebe, but otherwise only the usual Mallards, Coots, Moorhens, Mute Swans and Canada Geese), and was somewhat skeptical about the rumour anyway, but... after a half-circuit of the lake, i noticed a half-submerged log with a small roundish thing about halfway down it, got my binoculars out, and saw that, while pretty tiny (maybe 10cm total length), it was indisputably a turtle! It didn't seem to be moving very much, presumably basking in what was left of the sunlight (although it wasn't a particularly sunny day), but after going the rest of the way round the pond to see if there were any interesting birds or other turtles and returning to it, it had turned round to face the other direction.

Due to its small size and distance, and the light conditions, the photos i got of it were sadly somewhat blurred, but it is unmistakeably a turtle - these 2 were about the best ones:





One of the more blurred images, uncropped, with a duck in the picture to show scale:



There was also this log, which, while obviously pareidolia, did look rather like it could be mistaken for the head of a huge alligator or other lake monster:



While i only saw one small turtle, a local drunk did approach me unbidden while i was glancing at an information board detailing species of bird that could be seen there, firstly to tell me about the "little terns" that lived there, and then when i mentioned turtles to tell me a rather incoherent story of "snapper turtles" "big enough to take your hand off", and how he got cautioned by the police for "digging around in the mud trying to catch one for his little nephew"... so, who knows, something bigger might be in there...

(This isn't actually the first time that drunk people have approached me at park lakes to tell me about wildlife: around the time of the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, two Special Brew-drinking fishermen at Platt Fields Park told me about the "Icelandic geese" with "bright red beaks" that had "come over because of the volcano" - although the only geese there that i could see were the usual Greylags and Canadas...)

I'm not quite sure exactly what species of turtle this one is: presumably it's either a released pet or the descendant of one (while i have heard that it's too cold for turtles to reproduce in Britain, this one's small size did surprise me a bit, as the usual stories about turtles living in UK bodies of water are about pets that people released when they "got too big to keep"), so it would have to be a species commonly imported as a pet: possibly a Trachemys slider? (The Lord Geekington would probably be able to conclusively identify it...)

In any case, it's worth noting that if i hadn't heard the rumour about it, and therefore been looking for turtles, i almost certainly would have dismissed this turtle at a glance as just a roundish lump or stump on a log, and not have realised that any such thing lives in Alexandra Park - so all kinds of things can lurk right under people's noses, completely unnoticed...