Snow Goose

The Snow Goose is a medium-sized goose with a hefty bill and a long, thick neck. The white body has black wingtips that are barely visible on the ground but noticeable in flight. The pink bill has a dark line along it, often called a "grinning patch." Sometimes a dark morph or "Blue Goose" is seen with a white face, dark brown body and white under the tail.

Snow Geese travel in the company of another couple dozen geese and then form flocks of several hundred thousand during migration. Family groups forage together on wintering grounds, digging up tubers and roots from muddy fields and marshes. Snow Geese quickly adapt to using agricultural fields for feed which is one reason their populations have grown so much.

Snow Geese are vegetarians that eat grasses, sedges (wet-ground grass), rushes (grasslike plants with hollow stems in marshy places), shrubs, and willows. They consume seeds, stems, leaves, tubers and roots either by grazing or ripping plants out of the ground. 

Food passes through their digestive tract in an hour or two, generating six to 15 droppings per hour! The rate is greatest when the goose is eating rhizomes that are high in fiber content. (Just thought you'd like to know … )

The pink bill has a "grinning patch"

Females forage for up to 18 hours a day once they arrive at breeding grounds, but eat little once they start incubating eggs. Snow Geese mate for life and choose a mate of the same color. Snow Geese breed in colonies on Canadian and northern Alaskan tundra in the vicinity of coasts, from high arctic to sub-arctic. Snow Geese chicks are well developed when they hatch, with open eyes and down-covered bodies. 

Snow Geese make epic journeys by air but they are impressive on foot, too. Within three weeks of hatching, goslings may walk as much as 50 miles with their parents to find suitable feeding areas. In wintering and migrating flocks that are feeding, lookouts keep an eye out for eagles and other predators. Upon sighting a threat, they call out and the flock takes wing.

Watching huge flocks of Snow Geese swirling down from the sky is a little like standing inside a noisy snow globe!