Rhode Island 2/23/25 - Tundra Bean Goose

     In my last post I wrote about the influx of greater white-fronted geese in the northeast and I made mention of two different bean geese north of New Jersey.  A taiga bean-goose had been reported in upstate New York and a tundra bean-goose was found in Rhode Island.  The taiga bean-goose was discovered at the end of last year north of Albany and had most recently been reported earlier this month.  The tundra bean-goose was discovered on January 18 in Portsmouth and still continues there.  Ironically, my daughter was living in Portsmouth up until about a year or so ago before moving elsewhere in Rhode Island.  Even though I have never seen a bean-goose (they are both Eurasian geese that rarely wander to America), and despite my daughter being a very short drive away from the tundra one, I chose not to make the chase for either.

My thoughts for trying to see the tundra bean-goose changed last week when my daughter came home (her home away from home) for the week.  I knew I would be taking her back to Rhode Island over this past weekend, so it was just a matter if the goose would cooperate and hang around the area.  The last time I drove her home to Rhode Island with the hopes of seeing a rarity was two years ago when a green-tailed towhee was at a nearby refuge.  Of course, that bird was last seen in the morning, before I arrived in the afternoon.  I had a better feeling for luck this time though.

On the way there, I convinced my wife and daughter to let me take a slight detour off of Interstate 95 in Connecticut to give a try for a common gull in Stamford.  It was only about a five-minute diversion to the park where it had been reported.  Common gull is another Eurasian species, which I have seen before.  I saw a European subspecies of the gull in Mansfield County, CT in 2023, and short-billed gulls (formerly mew gulls which were split from common gulls) in Washington state in 2023.  This particular gull is the Kamchatka subspecies from the peninsula of the same name in far eastern Russia.  It, or another of the same subspecies, has come to Fairfield County for the past few years.  The problem with finding this bird is that it looks VERY much like ring-billed gulls with which it associates.  This adventure was like the Where's Waldo? game.  Even though this one had a streaked head, which meant I could ignore all the ring-billed gulls with clean white heads, it only eliminated about half of the potential gulls.  I checked every gull that didn’t have its head tucked and could not find it.  I gave up after about a half hour and we continued on to Rhode Island.

Once everyone got settled in at my daughter’s apartment, I scooted over to Lawton Reservoir in Portsmouth.  The bean-goose had recently been spotted there in the mornings and again at the end of each day.  In between it could be at any of several open fields in the area.  I got there midafternoon, and with other anxious viewers, waited until dusk.  Thousands of Canada geese came in for the night, but we could not locate the bean-goose.  It seemed like Where’s Waldo? all over again.  I gave up and planned on returning in the morning.  On Sunday, I arrived shortly after nine o’clock.  There were still many, many geese there as well as a few other birders atop the berm scoping them.  The bird had already been reported there on the RI GroupMe chats.  I asked the birders if it was still there and they all said, “Yes.”  One, who just happened to be the person who had first found the bird, let me see it in his scope.  The bird was out near the middle of the reservoir and swimming away.  I couldn’t get a good photo of it, but I did get to see its defining brown head and orange patch bill.  I stayed there for a while with Joe (the original finder and some of his friends) until most of the geese had departed, including the bean-goose.

We checked a couple of fields where the goose had been seen during the day without any luck.  I split from Joe’s group to try some other spots on my own.  Less than an hour later, just after scanning geese at a vineyard, I was checking the RI GroupMe when I also got a direct message from a local telling me that Joe had refound the goose in a small neighborhood field.  I saw Joe’s post and it was about 15 minutes away.  I arrived at a dormant roadside corn field with a couple dozen geese at the back end.  Joe pointed it out to me, and I got much better looks at it with my binoculars and naked eyes.  I took some photos, not great, but the best I could get.  I reposted the bird’s location with a house address to make it easier for other birders.  I hung out for a while so I could handoff the bird to somebody else.

Tundra bean-goose, Portsmouth, RI, 2/23/2025.  © S. Weiss

Bean-geese look closely related, and look very similar, to pink-footed geese.  There are some differences between them, most notably the bills.  The two bean-geese where once one species and separating them in the field can be difficult.  The goose has a shorter, thicker bill than the taiga bean-goose in New York.

A few birders came, observed, maybe took some photos and left.  I lingered there a bit more, knowing I most likely would never see another bean-goose again, tundra or taiga.  As I walked back to my car another group of people walked up.  I could tell they weren’t birders, but they were locals obviously looking for the goose.  I felt I needed to pay it forward, so I got out of my car and crossed back over the road to help them find it and explain why it was drawing so much attention.  They genuinely were excited when they saw it.  They just happened to live in one of the houses along the field.  It was a life bird for all of us and a great yard bird for them.