Photos by Donna

This past busy Saturday, I still opted to carry my cameras and was treated to two quick photo ops.  In the morning, on the farm at the corner of Rolling Bridge Road and Rt. 301 in the Centreville area, my intent was I hoped to find a flock of Snow Geese that have been there numerous times the past couple months, always when I didn’t have my cameras.  Saturday was a bright, sunny morning and the Snow Geese were there.  🙂  This is a returning location every winter for them, the problem is you just don’t know when they will be there.  Although our snow is now all but gone with our two days of a ‘heat wave’ (40’s-50’s), we still hadn’t thawed as yet so to me the snow was a plus.

I never left my truck for any of my photos.  I turned onto Rolling Bridge Road from Rt. 301 and drove on by them, then turned around and came up with them on my side.  For those that know the area, the truck in the next photo is on Rt. 301.  You can see how close they were to the dual highway.

My post title also mentioned Blue Geese.  Although rarer on the East Coast, you will usually find a few Blue Geese in the mix.   I had to look up again the difference and here’s word for word, courtesy of http://www.beautyofbirds.com.

The Snow Goose has two color plumage morphs, white (snow) or gray/blue (blue), thus the common description as “snows” and “blues.”  These white- and blue-morph birds interbreed and the offspring may be of either morph. These two colors of geese were once thought to be separate species; since they interbreed and are found together throughout their ranges, they are now considered two color phases of the same species. The color phases are genetically controlled. The dark phase results from a single dominant gene and the white phase is homozygous recessive. When choosing a mate, young birds will most often select a mate that resembles their parents’ coloring. If the birds were hatched into a mixed pair, they will mate with either color phase.

Here’s an adult Blue Goose alongside a juvenile White Goose.

 More in flight….

And dropping in!

Well worth the five minutes I stopped there!

When I came back by at the end of the day, they were gone.  See?  You never know when they’re there…but I still looked just in case.

Tomorrow I’ll post my second unexpected photo op treat of the day!  🙂