Pickle Out Of The Jar

When I first heard the expression, “Pickle out of the jar” we were on a birding trip and tried numerous times to find an endemic to the area.  Finally we found one, then a second and a third.  Our guide said it was like getting that first pickle out of the jar – once it’s out the rest are easier to remove.  So it was with our nemesis the Cackling Goose.  After searching for years and hundreds of thousands of geese, I saw two Cackling geese two years ago.  Karen got hers last year.

We were driving around Calumet Park on the far south side of Chicago on a cold January day looking for waterfowl or just about anything out of the ordinary when we spotted not 1 but 9 Cackling Geese!  These rare visitors are often overlooked because of their resemblance to their larger cousins the Canada Goose.  This Documenting shot was used to satisfy questions from the local eBird monitor about the number we reported on our checklist (it is an unusually high number for these elusive birds).

Here’s a closeup of a couple of them so you can see their smaller size and blunt bill.

Now that the pickle is out I guess we’ll be seeing them a lot more often.

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