"With the white birds are smaller numbers of darker geese their backs and chests dark grayish brown; their heads, necks and bellies white. These are the 'blue geese,' formerly considered a separate species. Biologists now recognize the two as simply color phases avian blonds and brunettes and both the white phase and blue phase are called snow geese ... Immature birds are dusky gray, much darker in the blue phase than in the white one, but easily recognizable as snow geese. Intermediate color combinations sometimes occur as well ...."

The bird in flight.

Photo taken with a Nikon D80 using a Nikon 300mm, f/2.8 lens.

January 3, 2009.