A small goose with a short stubby bill, 55–66 cm long, wingspan 106–121 cm, 0.88–2.2 kg. Black head, neck and breast with a small white patch on each side of the neck; dark grey-brown body (paler-bellied in the East Asian race), pure white undertail and a very short black tail, the shortest of any goose. All three subspecies breed on high-Arctic tundra and winter on temperate sea coasts.
Habitat
Strictly coastal: estuaries, intertidal mud, bays and steep shores, feeding chiefly on eelgrass and seaweed with the tides and rarely going inland.
Distribution
Breeds on Arctic Ocean coasts and islands north of the Arctic Circle; recorded but scarce from north-east China down the coast to Fujian, while the coasts of Hokkaido and northern Honshu (Notsuke Peninsula, Hakodate Bay) are East Asia's main wintering area with thousands of birds. Absent from Singapore. The Brent oilfield is named after it.
Season and behaviour
On northern Japanese coasts from October to April, with large flocks staging in the bays of eastern Hokkaido in October and November; scattered on the Chinese coast in winter. Feeds on seaweed beds at low tide and rests on inshore water at high tide.
Photography tips
These are the FilmAnalysis editors' notes, not content from the sources.
They feed on shallow seaweed beds and are closest at low tide; in the cold sea wind use a long lens on a window mount at 1/1000 s. The small white neck patch is the field mark and shows only in front light. Black geese before a grey sea make a low-saturation winter picture, with the line of surf as foreground.
Field ethics: keep a distance at which the bird does not change its behaviour; never approach or publish nest sites; no baiting, playback or flash; never clear vegetation around a nest; follow reserve rules and stay on paths.
Photographic styles
Black geese in a winter bay; quiet grey and black.
Similar species
Canada goose (much larger, white cheek); other Branta geese do not overlap; no other coastal goose or duck is this small and dark.
Related badge
The album badge "a duck" unlocks when the vision model explicitly names a a duck in your photo and you rate the analysis. The badge stops at "a duck": it does not tell species apart, and this page existing unlocks nothing.
The illustration is original FilmAnalysis artwork. The photograph is from Wikimedia Commons; its licence and author are under it.
