I stopped at Berlin pond today. I did not check the north end very carefully, but it appeared most birds were at the south end. The Long Tailed duck reported by Larry Clarfield last Tuesday was still present (a hen), as were a few mallards and several hooded mergansers. Canada Goose numbers were way up and a handful of discrete rafts were scattered across the large area visible from the road at the south end. There were several diminutive geese fairly close to the road; after a lot of thought I've finally convinced myself they were cackling geese rather than lesser Canada geese. One individual particularly close to me (at least it looked close to me at 60x!) was about 0.7x body length of a few neighboring common type geese, and when neck length is factored in the overall length could easily have been only 0.5x.
I'm pretty inexperienced with lesser type Canada Geese and hutchinsii cackling geese, so if anyone has any insights or visits the pond tomorrow I'm eager to hear your thoughts.
Jon Katz
Burlington
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