Quiz #286 (2009-1-07) Answer

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Answer by Tony Leukering

This week's quiz was a bit tricky for two reasons. All respondents got correctly to the geese, but many went adrift after that, as both the second-from-the-left bird and the rightmost bird caused folks problems. And, of course, those two birds are the reason behind my usage of this picture that I took at John Martin Reservoir, Bent Co., CO, on 16 December 2008. Aaron Brees provided a good analysis from the Snow vs. Ross's side, and I'll have him start us off.

"Four Chen geese. The left most bird is clearly a white adult Snow Goose. The next bird is a dark/intermediate immature Snow Goose. The lack of an extensive white vent rules out an unlikely immature dark Ross's and seems to make identifying the white bird on the right possible. The third bird is a dark adult Snow Goose. And the bird on the right is potentially the tricky one. I can't find any structural differences between it and the other white bird that I can't attribute to size difference between the two. The bill on the right bird looks proportionally the same as the other three birds. Being the same structurally and the same size as the immature Blue Goose, this is presumably another Snow Goose and not a Ross's, which should appear significantly smaller. My guess is that birds 1 and 3 are males and the two smaller birds are females, explaining the size difference."

Thanks, Aaron. For those that got fooled by the goose second from the left, the bird does appear fairly white-cheeked goose-like. However, that bird's head is mostly pale, rather than black with a white patch extending from the chin to behind the eye. Also note that both dark-morph birds lack the strongly contrasting white vent region of both Canada and Cackling geese (white-cheeked geese).

Four respondents' guesses were precluded from being correct for the competition, as they were submitted either in the plural (n=3) or lacking a capital in the second word (n=1).


Tallies of incorrect species provided in answers:
Ross's Goose - 9
Cackling Goose - 4
Canada Goose - 1
Greater White-fronted Goose - 1


The 20 of 34 providing the correct answer:
James Stephenson
Aaron Brees
Victor Germain
Nick Komar
Ann McDonald
Peter Burke
Al Guarente
Diane Luck
David Elwonger
Andy Dettling
David Hill
Tom Parchman
Mark Dettling
Pam Norris
Mark Gabriel
Chris Warren
Peter Wilkinson
Todd Reeves
Barbara Deneen
Andrea Smith-Guarente

Answer: Snow Goose

Quiz #285 (2009-1-06) Answer

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Answer by Tony Leukering

While walking through the kitchen heading for the fridge for a snack, you glance out the window at the feeder and see seven birds on the niger feeder. Ah, siskins. It's been a nice Pine Siskin year in many places in the U.S. this winter, but you've been feeding 100s of them for two months and gotten a little jaded. So, you don't notice that the middle bird on the left side of the feeder is a wee bit different. It seems to have some thin white streaking on the rear crown, some more down the middle of the back, no yellow fringing on the remiges, and a much more deeply notched tail than most siskins show.

For those with more experience looking through such scenes, the overall frostier appearance of that bird may well have been enough to cause a pause in the walk to the fridge and a reach for the spare binocular that lives on the window sill. Those folks would then have been treated to a slightly different scene in the next second or two, one depicted in the picture of the same seven birds below.


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While Pine Siskins can nearly lack yellow remex fringing, or that fringing can be pale enough to not be yellow, even the drabbest sport at least some. In this regard, one should note that the fringing on the inner primaries reaches nearly to or to the greater coverts and these fringes are often the most obvious (note those on the bottom right bird). Common Redpolls also usually sport remex fringing, but the color is white, though often the fringing is limited to a fairly short but wide bar on the secondaries, as in the hidden-in-the-open mystery bird here (just beyond the tips of the longest two tertials; all three of the tertials are tipped white, too; see picture labels).

I purposefully took this quiz picture for this venue at the famed Fawn Brook Inn, in Allenspark, Boulder Co., CO, 27 January 2005. I sat on this one for years waiting for all the CO folks that saw that bird to forget about it. That plan, apparently, worked well, as only four CO birders got the quiz correct.

I received no answers this time that included any incorrect species, but most of the answers were of of Pine Siskin only. One of those would have been precluded from being correct for the competition, as it had no capitals (please, read the rules).

Tallies of incorrect species provided in answers:
none

The 11 of 48 providing the correct answer:
Su Snyder
Andy Dettling
Nick Komar
Tyler Bell
Jonathan Lautenbach
Chuck Carlson
Peter Wilkinson
Aaron Brees
Mark Gabriel
Marcel Such
Joel Such

Answer: Common Redpoll, Pine Siskin