Snow Goose

Anser caerulescens

Also known as: Blue Goose

About This Species

Huge, noisy flocks of this all-white goose with black wingtips gather on agricultural fields, marshes and shallow lakes across North America in winter and during migration, feeding on grain stubble, roots and marsh vegetation. The spectacle of thousands lifting off together, with a constant babbling chorus of calls, is one of the best ways to find and enjoy the species at traditional staging and wintering sites. Late autumn through early spring, particularly at dawn and dusk feeding flights between roosts and fields, offers the most dramatic viewing.

Ethical Viewing Guidelines

Large feeding and roosting flocks are sensitive to disturbance and can be flushed easily, wasting energy reserves that are critical for migration, so viewing from a vehicle, blind or established viewing area at a distance is preferable to approaching on foot across open fields.
Migratory waterfowl are protected under federal law in the United States and Canada, and hunting is regulated by season and permit, but rules differ between the two countries and across states and provinces, so local regulations should be checked directly.
Avoiding walking into roost sites at dawn or dusk, when birds are most concentrated and vulnerable to mass flushing, is a good general precaution.

LCAvesAnseriformesAnatidae

Seasonal Activity

1,206,561 sightings · 2000–2026

Citizen science records via GBIF

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Classification

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Anseriformes
Family: Anatidae

Photo

Wikimedia Commons / Wikimedia Commons

CC-BY-SA-4.0

Occurrence data from GBIF.