Cambridge, Massachusetts: Geese, et. al.

Near the Cambridge end of the BU bridge, there’s a large park that’s cut across by an old (abandoned) set of railroad tracks. I occasionally like to walk along the Charles River Basin, and the other day I noticed a large gathering of assorted waterbirds in this park. What was interesting about this particular gaggle of geese was that they were pretty evenly segregated into two groups. Near the entrance of the park were probably a bit over two dozen white geese. I don’t know what type of geese they were; I suspect they were snow geese, but Merlin seems to disagree with me (it says that snow geese are rare, so that’s not likely). Image of part of this group below.

Further into the park was a much larger group of Canada geese. There were at least 100 birds in this group, and probably closer to 200 (I didn’t count though). They were operating separately from the other group. Interestingly, there were a few birds in the group whose feather pattern seemed to be some sort of blend between the two species. (You can see one of these critters in the above picture.)

Closest to the water there were also a small number of wood ducks. This could be because the Charles River is mostly frozen and this area, being in the wind footprint of the BU bridge, is one of the few parts of the river that remains thawed. Since these are all waterbirds, I think they’re probably competing for access to the thawed river.