Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) are a common sight in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, with their familiar long black necks, white chinstraps, gray-brown bodies and wings, and loud honking noises. One of the reasons these large geese are seen year-round here is described below.

…numerous poorly documented and undocumented releases of Canada Geese have been made in the western states from privately owned captive flocks (former decoy flocks) (Hanson 1965), in some cases representing several subspecies and probably hybrids. Some of these mixed-origin birds became semi-wild “park” geese, which, when they became a nuisance, were “managed” by transplanting them to other locales. Many resident populations in w. Oregon originated through transplant operations.

Birds of Oregon: A General Reference, edited by David B. Marshall, Matthew G. Hunter and Alan L. Contreras, p. 82.

The category of geese that look like Canada Geese is more complex than I realized until I saw a chart on a wall at the Finley Refuge nature store several years ago. Since then, I have been paying more attention to the different varieties of geese that, at first glance, appear to be Canada Geese but are, in fact, a different species or a subspecies.

Another thing I learned is that the classification of these geese has changed over recent years, so guidebooks produced fifteen or twenty years ago may have different names and categories for these geese than are found in current sources such as the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology website, birdsoftheworld.org.

McFadden Marsh at the William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge is a good place to see wintering migratory waterfowl, including swans, geese, and ducks. We visited on February 13, 2024, and saw many cackling geese, clearly recognizable by their higher-pitched calls and smaller size compared to the Canada Goose.

The Cackling Goose (Branta hutchinsii) is classified in the genus Branta, along with the Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) and four other species. Cackling Geese are currently subdivided into four sub-species, two of which, the Taverner’s (B. h. taverneri) and the minima (B. h. minima), both winter in the Willamette Valley.¹

The diminutive and highly gregarious Cackling Goose was relatively obscure until 2004, when it was acknowledged as a distinct species from its well-known relative, the Canada Goose (Branta canadensis), based largely on genetic differences. Like the Canada Goose, the Cackling Goose is a mostly brown goose with a sharply contrasting black neck and head and bright white cheeks. It is, however, smaller bodied and shorter billed than the Canada Goose, and it has a higher-pitched call that would be better described as a yelp than a cackle.

birdsoftheworld.org, Cornell Lab of Ornithology (detailed citation in footnote #1 below).

The Cackling Geese flock made a thrilling cacophony of calls as they flew. I selected a twenty-three-second excerpt to provide a flavor of what it sounded like standing at the edge of the marsh (click on the audio file immediately below to hear their calls).

I also filmed video clips of the scene as flocks of Cackling Geese flew in to land on the marsh that day, including examples of how they, “like many other geese, will engage in evasive and acrobatic flight when landing where they suspect predators (including human hunters) may be present.”²

Looking closely at the point 38-seconds into the video, you can see a pair of adult Bald Eagles perched in the background. Also in the still image below, you can see a sub-adult Bald Eagle in the middle right of the frame chasing the Cackling Geese—clearly, these geese have good reason to take evasive maneuvers.

Cackling Geese are more shy than Canada Geese, but they also frequent suburban parks, so they are easy to find in the Willamette Valley in winter and early spring.

1. Mlodinow, S. G., P. Pyle, T. B. Mowbray, C. R. Ely, J. S. Sedinger, R. E. Trost, K. A. Spragens, and M. A. Patten (2024). Cackling Goose(Branta hutchinsii), version 2.0. In Birds of the World (N. D. Sly, P. G. Rodewald, and B. K. Keeney, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.cacgoo1.02 ↩︎
2. ibid. ↩︎