Report Summaries

2025A-1 18-Jan-2025 to 10-Mar-2025 (7–0): One; Portsmouth High School fields, Lawton Valley Reservoir et al., Portsmouth; Joe Koger (I), m.ob.

The first sighting for Rhode Island and New England and one of very few ever recorded in eastern North America, this Tundra Bean-Goose was found by Joe Koger on January 18, 2025. It was observed and studied by many over the next seven weeks.

Until quite recently, tundra-breeding birds of the Bean Goose complex, serrirostris and rossicus, were considered conspecific with taiga-breeding populations (Taiga Bean-Goose A. fabalis: Banks et al. 2007), and previously (e.g., AOU 1983), all of these populations were also considered conspecific with High Arctic–breeding Pink-footed Goose (A. brachyrhynchus). Indeed, Tundra Bean-Goose is in many ways intermediate between Taiga Bean-Goose and Pink-footed Goose—geographically, ecologically, and in appearance. Occurring at the same time as a long-staying Taiga Bean-Goose in Saratoga and Washington counties north of Albany, New York, the Portsmouth bird offered opportunities for comparison for many observers, some of whom carefully noted its shorter neck, shorter and relatively thicker bill, more noticeable angle between bill and forehead, and more restricted orange bill band. In all these ways, it subtly resembled Pink-footed Goose, but it clearly differed from that taxon in terms of the bright orange color of its legs and bill band, its larger and heavier bill, its darker upperwing, and its more extensively black tail.