The highlight of the afternoon, though, was getting up close and personal to some Cackling Geese. There haven't been a shortage of these birds in the county this Winter, but they don't usually let you get too close. For some reason, I was able to get close to a nice group of them at the lake, plunk down, and snap some photos.
I loved getting a chance to see the difference in head structure that Cackling Geese display as compared to the Canada Geese. Their heads are very rectangular, and their bills are definitely stubbier than Canadas. Both the bills and heads are a bit variable.
The bird with the red arrow displays a much rounder head. The bird with the green arrow displays a much more rectangular head. Both birds are Cacklers, though.
Look at the bill on the bird with the orange bill. It appears quite a bit longer than the bill of the bird with the green bill. Again, to the best of the my knowledge, both birds are Cacklers.
Another variation that was present in the flock was that a few of the birds had white neck rings while others had no neck ring whatsoever.
The birds with the green arrows display clear white neck rings.
The bird with the green arrow is honking. While the call was noticeably higher at the time, I believe it could be difficult to identify the bird from a Canada if I didn't have a visual of the bird.
One of the details that seems apparent when you see Cacklers and Canadas together is the size of the neck. This is pretty subjective, though, and is difficult when the birds are by themselves.
These two photos show how long the necks can appear when the bird is in an alert posture. Most of the time the necks look distinctly short.
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