(no subject)

Side note on today's bicycle thing: when I rode into Liberty State Park today I had to do some slalom work because OH MY GOD THE GOOSE DOO. All over the place. Little green cigar butts, squishy and yuck- and fresh, too. It came from a flock of geese I saw grazing on the grasses towards the river, also wandering across Audrey Zapp Lane and ignoring cars. At first I thought they were Canada geese- but only for a second, because they were the wrong size. Plus, their proportions were off. They were shaped like ducks with longish necks, for all that they had black heads and white throat markings and grayish bodies. I did some poking in Wiki, and then searched on Google for the candidate species, and found them.

They were Brent Geese, the pale-bellied subspecies. I think there must have been at least thirty birds there, maybe more. I didn't know they flocked in New Jersey!