On November 6, 2017, I drove to the field directly to the west of the Burlington Honda dealership with the objective of photographing swans I had previously seen in the field.  Upon arriving I found the field full of Trumpeter swans and Snow geese and spent the better part of an hour photographing them flying in and landing.

I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that my concentration was so focussed on flying swans and geese that I had’t noticed that there were many Cackling geese feeding in the field… with more groups flying in.   I eventually estimated that there were at least 100 Cackling geese in the field.  Prior to this day I had only seen Cackling geese on one occasion, and in that case there was only a single pair!  If you’re not familiar with this bird, it looks very similar to the larger Canada goose but is only about the size of a duck.

I had time while monitoring arrivals to consult the app on my phone regarding the Cackling geese, and when doing so I noticed that there was an Aleutian goose, apparently a sub-species of the Canada goose.  I began looking through all of the geese and finally found a pair of the Aleutian geese.  (Note the white ring around the base of the bird’s neck.)

As I watched flock after flock of birds arrive at the field I noticed an incoming flock with a single bird that didn’t resemble the rest of the flock.  The distance to the odd bird was formidable (I estimated it at more than 150 yards) but took a photo in the hopes that I might be able to identify the bird.  When I processed the photo I was surprised at its quality considering my distance from my subject, and the bird is easily identifiable as a Greater White-fronted goose.

I had been sitting in my car at the edge of the field for well over an hour and my attention was finally drawn to what appeared to be a large clod of dirt about 30 feet away in the recently-plowed field.  I trained my lens on the object and found that it was a motionless Wilson’s snipe which I was able to watch for the rest of the time I was there, about 30 minutes.  Again, I think all of the other activity in and over the field allowed the snipe to go undetected.