My Life List #1 - Snow Goose

By Mel Carriere

Turns out my life list was wrong.  I wrote a previous post here about the Common Loon being the #2 bird on the list, but that bird should actually be #30.  I made this error because in the field guides the Loons are always first, but on the American Ornithologist Union (AOU) Checklist the Loons actually come after the Timamiformes, Anseriformes and Galliformes.  Therefore, since my own list conforms to the AOU guidelines I ask that the real occupant of first place please stand up - and this is the Snow Goose, Anser caerulescens.

I am happy to write about this bird, because it takes me off on happy birding trips with my family a long way from home, a long time ago.  My first encounter with the Snow Goose was in 1999, an excellent year for my list, because that was my first year birding and everything was new.  I actually made some totally Asperger's spreadsheet out of my life list, and the calculations there demonstrate that 1999 gave me 54.89% percent of my bird total as it currently stands.

More specifically it was 27 March, 1999 when my family visited Bosque Del Apache Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico on our way home from Albuquerque, where my Mother lived at the time and where I grew up.  More neckbeard stats - spreadsheet says that although Bosque Del Apache has contributed only .08 percent of my list, the state of New Mexico is responsible for 11.16% of the total, a distant second place from California, my home state, which has an almost insurmountable lead with 83.26 percent.

I remember it being sometime toward evening that we were driving the dirt roads in Bosque Del Apache that form little levees around the flooded fields where the birds are.  Spotting an enormous flock of geese to the North of the road I stopped the car and got out to have a peek.  I believe these birds must have been recently hunted because they were very skittish.  No sooner had I satisfied myself through my binoculars that these were Snow Geese then I was spotted and the entire spooked flock of at least a few hundred took flight in magnificent fashion.

The second time I saw Snow Geese was at Sony Bony NWR in the Imperial Valley, not far from here in San Diego.  Those birds were indeed being hunted; we could here the booming of shotguns all around us, and a park ranger actually stopped me to check that I wasn't one of the shooters.  Satisfied that I was armed with nothing but a pair of cheap binoculars he drove off to look for the real offenders, being concerned that these hunters had intruded onto the refuge.  I remember that my wife got some pretty good pics of these Snow Geese, and I may just look for them.

The snow goose is mysterious in its own way because it breeds in the far north above the Arctic Circle, which means that since this Goose has to spend 6 months out of the year travelling the birds I saw were undoubtedly on their way to the Arctic or on the way back. The Snow Goose reminds me of my own travelling, so apart from holding the prestigious #1 spot on my list it is dear to me because it brings to mind the truth that in order to refresh the body, mind, and spirit, one must migrate.

Photo from:  "Anser caerulescens CT8" by Cephas - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anser_caerulescens_CT8.jpg#/media/File:Anser_caerulescens_CT8.jpg

Fuzzy snow geese in the Imperial Valley are either by me or my wife.  I blame my wife.

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