Pink Bird Wonders Sighted
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 12th, 2007
An archival painting of the Pink-footed goose (Anser brachyrhynchus).
The legs are stunning. They are bright pink, almost bubble-gum pink. It’s very exciting….They are beautiful geese. Most people had never seen these geese before….What we are looking at is whether the pink-footed geese, with their westward shift [in Greenland] are now migrating with some of the white-fronted geese. It could be theorized that all of these geese have arrived together. It’s an interesting ornithological puzzle.Rachel Farrell, Rhode Island’s leading bird expert, while observing the pair of pinked-foot geese at Hammersmith Farm in Newport.
The pink-footed goose, a bird that is relatively common in Europe, is rare here. The pair making a winter 2007 appearance around Newport, Rhode Island may be the same pair that was apparently seen in Connecticut last year.
Only 15 different pink-footed geese records (sightings of distinct specimens) have reportedly ever been made in the USA.
For more information, read today’s Providence Journal article, “A Wild Goose Chase” by Richard Salit.
An archival painting of the Pink-Headed Duck (Netta caryophyllacea).
The pink-footed goose is not to be confused with the Pink-Headed Duck, the almost legendary avian cryptid from Nepal, supposedly extinct.
Sightings persist of the Pink-Headed Duck. These almost mystic encounters have resulted in one famed 1991 book on the bird, Rory Nugent’s The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I call stuff like this “cryptids for the rest of us.”
Apparently some white pelicans – not normal – are wintering at Blackwater Refuge in MD for the second straight year. (Two visits and I haven’t seen them yet.) I got a preview a few Octobers ago, though – two of them, high over the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. No chance of mistaking them; they’re as distinctive as bald eagles. Maybe more so.
A few years ago, a lake near me, in College Park, MD, had three common loons in breeding plumage – not normal – for like a month. They eventually left. But not before I saw them on several visits.
As Peterson said: Birds have wings, and they do things.
One of my hunting buddies shot a Mandarin duck a few years ago while waterfowling on the Patuxent River. He mounted it.
Although unlikely, it is worth noting that sightings like this can be the shape of things to come. Keeping things along avian lines, here are 2 examples-
In 1946 a pair of gulls, common to New England, but never before seen in the state, were reported in New Jersey. In 1966, another pair of even rarer northern gulls were spotted in NJ. At the time, I’m sure they were considered an oddity, a fluke. But today, the birds of 1946, Herring Gulls, are probably the dominant form of gulls in NJ, able to outcompete any other shorebird, except perhaps for the even larger gulls of 1966, the Black-Backed Gulls, which are now common, if not overwhelmingly abundant like the Herring Gulls.
A similar example would be the Canada Geese that began staying in NJ year-round back in the 1980’s rather than migrating through. A similar trend seems to be occuring today amongst the Brant, a close relative of the Canada Goose.
The times, they are a’changin’, and unlike other animals like polar bears, birds have a greater ability to expand their ranges, unimpeded by such things as mountain ranges and large bodies of water…
Notice all of the credit given to sightings of this animal. Because it is a known animal, nobody questions what these people saw. Just thought I would throw that in there.
If you are a birder, and provide a detailed report using as your references known markings for the animal (and I’m sure it helps to have other eyewitnesses), you have a leg up.
If the animal isn’t known to exist, period, then I guess the question is: what makes your report different from all the other ones science doesn’t seem to have bought?
That’s the problem, I think.
I’m convinced that the Patterson film is “fuzzy” not visually, but through the CULTURAL lens through which we’re viewing it. When it “can’t” exist, it’s fuzzy. If a funded expedition had brought that film back…well, at the moment it looks better than the evidence for a certain Australian parrot.
Hate always inviting the sasquatch to these things. But he’s a great example and he looks hilarious in those pointy hats. 😀
Yes, if you are a birder, then you are an expert witness and your testimony means something. To me, this case shows that indeed witness reports can be taken at face value, but there’s a catch, it has to be a KNOWN animal. Markings and whatnot aside, I think being an 8 foot tall, hairy creature is enough markings for anyone. Sorry, everyone, I do not intend to start another debate about this, I just can’t help seeing some hypocrisy and bias when it comes to the acceptability of sightings of known animals versus unknown animals.
And mystery_man, I can take your point yet another step, as the thread about the fake unknown parrot seems to show.
An experienced observer with a lot of years in the field could be – and apparently sometimes is – motivated to use that experience to no good end. Money and recognition have long been seen to be adequate motivation for all kinds of wrongdoing.
Most of the people seeing this ape (and yep, hairy bipedal and eight feet tall is enough ID for me! :-D) have less than no motivation to report it, from what you frequently read in their reports. Many of them were so afraid of ridicule that they were hesitant to even post, anonymously, to a website.
Even though the question, why should your sighting be different from all the rest? is still valid….maybe we should approach that question from a different angle, hmmm? If all those people are all that scared…and make the report anyway….isn’t this saying something?