by Mary Ann Thomas, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 4/1/25
There are rare birds and then there are extremely rare birds.
A stunner, the barnacle goose, falls into the latter category. It is a sleek, compact and medium-sized goose sporting a bright white face, black eye markings and a black neck.
And it’s a long way from home.
The bird winters in northern Europe and migrates to Arctic regions to breed. Some are permanent residents of the North and Baltic seas, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
Instead of showing up where you might expect — in waterfowl migration hotspots such as Presque Isle or Pymatuning — the bird landed last weekend in East Deer. It was a first-time sighting in Allegheny County and likely in Western Pennsylvania, said Brian Shema, operations manager for the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania.
The goose is hanging out at a somewhat obscure venue, several adjacent sites including East Deer Memorial Park, East Deer River Front Park, Pittsburgh Brewing Co. and the Allegheny River.
“It’s not uncommon for birds to get off track and end up somewhere strange,” said Shema. “The Northeast coast makes sense. It’s south of the goose’s Arctic breeding grounds.
“There are several records in eastern Pennsylvania. The strange thing is, this goose was found on the west side of the Laurel Mountains.”
A Plum couple struck gold when they ventured to East Deer on Saturday, looking for migrating waterfowl on the Allegheny River.
“That morning I wanted to find a blue-winged teal, which we have seen there before,” said Amy Henrici, the retired collection manager for the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Oakland.
She and her husband, Pat McShea, a retired Carnegie museum educator, are avid birders. They have a neat buddy system to photograph and identify a rare bird while alerting flocks of other birders within minutes.
They scanned a gaggle of about 20 Canada geese on an athletic field and one was noticeably smaller.
“Pat said, ‘Oh, there’s a different goose with the Canada geese on the field.”
Henrici began photographing it while her husband consulted birding literature to identify what she suspected was a barnacle goose.
“We were very excited, believe me. We knew it was very rare. We wanted to get the word out to other birders quickly,” Henrici said.
With eBird – an online site for crowd-sourcing bird reports – and other online platforms and apps, the couple alerted other birders quickly.
Shema jumped on the sighting, and he had company. Well over 100 birders showed up over the weekend, including one from Columbus, Ohio, said Steve Gosser, of McCandless, a wildlife photographer.
Soon after he arrived for a Saturday bird-watching outing at Glade Dam Lake in Butler County, he received a phone alert on Henrici’s sighting via a rare bird report posted on a GroupMe message app. He left almost immediately for the hour-long drive to East Deer.
“I decided since this would be a lifer. Who knows if I’d ever get another opportunity to see a barnacle [goose]?”
A cadre of birders had already assembled and were watching the goose by the time he arrived.
“It’s always a thrill to see a bird you’ve never seen before, especially one that normally resides on a different continent!” he said.
The goose stayed through the weekend and into Monday. It’s hard to say how long the bird will be in East Deer, Shema said.
“Perhaps it wintered here. We can’t draw conclusions without knowing where it came from.”
During other rare U.S. sightings of the barnacle goose – usually by itself – the bird is almost always found with Canada geese, he added.
Shema doesn’t know if the Canada goose flock in East Deer is made up of resident or migrating birds.
“Updates on the goose have been daily since Saturday from area birders, keeping everybody abreast,” he said. “This is definitely one that people will travel to see.”
