The Snow Geese have once again returned to the Lower Mainland after flying from their breeding grounds in the Bering Sea. The geese photographed below were gathered in the hundreds, or thousands and were resting and feeding on the tidal salt marsh at Iona Beach Regional Park. Snow Geese will eat most parts of a plant including; stems, leaves, tubers, and even roots, so marshlands like these are a crucial feeding area for a bird that has just completed a long migration or a bird refuelling to continue its migration south.
The geese we see, those that breed in the Bering Sea and winter on the Pacific coast are a subspecies of Snow Geese known as Lesser Snow Geese (Anser caerulescens). Lesser simply means that they are smaller than the other subspecies, the Greater Snow Geese, which breeds in Northeastern Canada (Anser caerulescens subsp. atlanticus) and winter west of Rockies.
Some of the Lesser Snow Geese will stay in the Lower Mainland for the winter while other will continue on to Mexico, California, and Washington State for the winter.
These birds are very distinctive by ear and by eye as they're all white except for their black wing tips. Immature geese have light gray plumage. Keep your eyes peeled for a less common Blue morph, a snow goose that has blue colouring resulting from a single dominant gene. And you'll see the brown colouring around the beak in the photos, a result of feeding on underground parts of plants and getting stained with soil.
Iona Beach Regional Park is a very reliable spot to see these birds if you're interested!
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