{"id":152302,"date":"2024-02-04T06:15:23","date_gmt":"2024-02-04T13:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=152302"},"modified":"2024-02-04T09:42:07","modified_gmt":"2024-02-04T16:42:07","slug":"greater-white-fronted-goose-in-utah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/04\/greater-white-fronted-goose-in-utah\/","title":{"rendered":"Greater White-fronted Goose In Utah"},"content":{"rendered":"

My first “specklebelly”, ever.<\/p>\n

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Yesterday morning I was fortunate enough to spend some quality time with the first Greater White-fronted Goose I’ve ever seen, much less photographed. In Utah this species is unusual, a vagrant, so you can imagine my excitement.<\/p>\n

This is one of the first shots I took of ‘him’, while he was resting in the deep shade against the bank. Just before I took this photo he’d been sleeping.<\/p>\n

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When he first came out into the light, light that was intermittent and fairly brief, he was sidelit.<\/p>\n

But I still like the shot, in part because it shows that his “white-front”, the white feathers between his bill and eyes, is actually mostly feathers rather than a white portion of the proximal part of his bill. The proximal portion of his bill is also white-ish but it’s less white, as you’ll see best in one of the photos below.<\/p>\n

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The photos I took of him while the sun was behind clouds turned out better than I thought they would.<\/p>\n

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I’m only including this shot of him next to a Mallard so readers can get a sense of relative size. Specklebellies are a little less than half the size of Canada Geese (4.8 lbs. vs 9.8 lbs.)<\/p>\n

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Getting a drink.<\/p>\n

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Near the end of my time with him he came up on land for a short while. This is one of the few shots I got of him that allows us to see his legs and one of his feet. Yes, he’d been grazing on grass.<\/p>\n

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A portrait, for head and neck detail.<\/p>\n

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When he got back into the water and swam away from me he gave me a look-back that I like, even though it’s a butt shot. Sometimes sidelight just works.<\/p>\n

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I’ll close with one of the few shots i got of him with the sun behind me.<\/p>\n

Waterfowl hunters call this species “specklebellies” because of the dappled black markings on their creamy light breast, markings that resemble those on birch or aspen trees. I never did get any photos that show those markings very well. Maybe next time.<\/p>\n

Ha, as if there’s likely to be a next time…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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My first “specklebelly”, ever. (9 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,7326],"tags":[7324,1554,7323,7325],"class_list":["post-152302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-greater-white-fronted-goose","tag-anser-albifrons","tag-drinking","tag-greater-white-fronted-goose-in-utah","tag-specklebelly"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/greater-white-fronted-goose-4450b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-DCu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152302"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152372,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152302\/revisions\/152372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}