A Greylag goose, known scientifically as “Anser Anser,” is a large Anatidae waterfowl family goose species.
It has pink legs and a white plumage, barred Grey, mottled, orange beak.
It is a big bird that measures 29 and 36 inches with weight averaging 3.3kg.
Its distribution is widespread, as some of its kind migrate Southwards from the North of Asia and Europe to spend the winter in warmer places. Goose is derived from the Latin name “Anser.”
Greylag geese migrate to northerly spawning ground in moorland, spring, or nest in marshes around lakes and on coastal islands.
Usually, Greylag geese copulate for life and form their nest in the middle of the vegetation.
A clutch of three to five eggs is laid; The female incubates the eggs, and both parents defend and raise the young.
The birds stay together as a family group, traveling south as part of a flock in the fall and separating the following year.
In winter, they occupy semi-aquatic habitats, estuaries, swamps, and flooded fields, feed on grass, and often consume crops.
Some populations, such as those in southern England and urban areas throughout the species range, are mainly resident and occupy the same area year-round.
Scientific Classification
- Scientific Name: Anser anser
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Chordata
- Class: Aves
- Order: Anseriformes
- Family: Anatidae
- Genus: Anser
- Species: Anser Anser
Description
Greylag is the bulky and largest Grey goose of 80 of the Genus Anser species, though it has more agility than domestic geese and is lightly built.
Its body is bulky in nature and pear-shaped, with a thick, long neck and a bill with a large head. Its legs and feet are pink, with a pink or orange bill with brown or white nails.
It is 29-36 inches long, with a wing length measuring 16.2-18.9 inches. Its tail measures up to 2.4 to 2.7 inches, its bill is 2.5- to 2.7 inches long, and its tarsus is 2.8 to 3.7 inches. The weight of a Greylag ranges from 2.16- 4.56 kg, with a mean weight of around 3.3 kg.
The wingspan is 58-71 inches. The Males are generally larger than the females, with the sexual dimorphism more conspicuous in the eastern subspecies rubirostris, which is larger than the nominate subspecies on average.
The plumage of the gray goose is gray-brown with a darker head and a paler chest, and a lighter belly with a variable amount of black spots. It has a light gray fore and aft section noticeable when the bird is in flight or stretching its wings on the ground.
It has a white line on the upper flanks, and the wing covers are light in contrast to the darker flight feathers. Its plumage is patterned by the pale edges of the feathers.
Young people mainly differ in the absence of black spots on their chest, stomach, and gray legs. Adults have a characteristic concertina fold pattern in the feathers on the neck.
The gray goose has a loud cackling similar to the domestic goose “aahng-ung-ung” uttered in flight or on the ground.
Several subtle variations are used in different circumstances, and individual geese can identify other known geese based on their voices.
The sound of a flock of geese is similar to a dog barking. Goslings chirp or whistle slightly, and adults hiss when threatened or angry.
Distribution and Habitat
This species has a Palearctic distribution. The nominated subspecies spawn in Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, northern Russia, the Baltic States, eastern Hungary, Poland, and Romania.
It also spawns locally in Denmark, Slovakia, Germany, the UK, Austria, the Czech Republic, and North Macedonia. The eastern race extends east over much of Asia to China. European birds travel south to the Mediterranean and North Africa.
Asian birds travel to Iran, northern India, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, east China, and Pakistan.
In their breeding areas, they are found in bogs with scattered lakes, swamps, bogs, and peat bogs, next to salt lakes, and on small islands that lie a little outside the sea.
They like dense ground covers made of rushes, bushes, reeds, heather, and willow thickets. In their winter quarters, they can often be found in marshes, estuaries, freshwater swamps, steppes, flooded fields, moors, and pastures near lakes, rivers, and streams.
They also visit agricultural areas where they feed on winter crops, beans, rice, or other crops and migrate to shallows, coastal sandbars, mud banks in estuaries, or reclusive lakes at night.
Many immature birds gather yearly to molt on the Rone Islands near Gotland in the Baltic Sea.
From the 1950s onward, temperature increases during winter led to the breeding of greylag geese in Central Europe, reducing winter traveling distances.
This means geese can return to form breeding grounds in the early spring.
The number of Greylag geese as breeding birds significantly reduced in Great Britain, where they moved north to breed wild only in the northern mainland of Scotland and the Outer Hebrides.
Behavior
Greylag geese feed largely on grass, making them herbivorous. They find short-growing grasses very nutritious and mostly graze in pastures with cows or sheep.
Because of their low nutritional status, they must feed for much of their time. The herb passes through the intestines quickly and is drained frequently.
The tubers of the sea clubrush (Bolboschoenus maritimus), as well as berries and aquatic plants such as duckweed (Lemna) and floating sweet grass (Glyceria fluitans), are caught.
In winter, they eat grass and leaves but collect grain on stubble and sometimes feed on growing plants, especially at night.
They feed on oats, wheat, barley, buckwheat, lentils, peas, and root crops. Acorns and seaweed are sometimes eaten, as are acorns (Zostera sp.). It can be eaten on the coast.
In the UK in the 1920s, the pink-footed goose “discovered” that potatoes were edible and began to feed on potato waste.
The gray goose followed suit in the 1940s, regularly searching for tubers in cultivated fields. They also eat small fish, amphibians, crustaceans, mollusks, and insects.
Homosexual couples are widespread, and 14-20% of couples may be gender depending on the herd and share the features of heterosexual couples, except that the bonds seem tighter due to the intensity of their ads.
Same-sex couples also engage in advertising and sexual relationships and often occupy high-ranking positions in the herd because of their unmatched strength and courage, leading some to think that they might serve as keepers of the herd.
The orientation of the birds is generally flexible, with more than half of the widowers mating with a bird of the opposite sex.
