Goose Update

Yesterday I blogged about a strange looking hybrid goose that I'd seen at Linacre. At the time I speculated that it could be a Canada x Barnacle Goose hybrid. I also posted a picture on Twitter, and got replies from David and Stewart from the ringing group, who said that it looked like a Canada x Greylag Goose hybrid.

Canada x Greylag hybrid?

With this in mind, I decided to look back on my blog to see if there were any other reports of a similar bird that I'd forgotten about. Although I didn't find any reports of this type of hybrid bird from Linacre, I did find this post from London that showed a very similar looking bird that I'd seen in Hyde Park in 2012. See link here for a picture. I also did a quick internet search and came up with many images of hybrids between these two species. See here for the images.

Greylag Geese are an annual visitor to Linacre, usually seen in the first few weeks of April, and often in the company of Canada Geese, so it's not impossible to speculate that this bird could be a hybrid of these two species.