The Pink Footed Goose lives and mates in Iceland and winters in northern Europe, so Baltimore bird watchers on Sunday were delighted and amazed to see two pink footed geese joining their Canadian cousins grazing in a field on the old Johnson estate on Falls Road. “An awesome regional rarity” said a post on Maryland and DC Birding.
Spotted earlier at Quarry Lake, the pink footed geese were attracting a crowd of bird watchers Sunday afternoon on Falls Road, getting a first hand glimpse before the approaching snowstorm threatened to scare them off. One birder explained that their presence here is an example of “mirror migration,” in which the birds make a navigational mistake, heading the right number of miles — say 3,000 — in the wrong direction. Happens to the best of us.
SO funny! I drove by there yesterday afternoon and wondered what everyone was looking at. I figured that it was some type of bird in the field, but all I could see was geese…