Band info

[jblabsnduck]

I thought this was interesting so I am going to put it up here. It is info on where different colored neck collars come from.

A little bit about collars

Snow, Ross', White-fronted, and Canada Geese (small forms) are collared by researchers cooperating in the Arctic Goose Joint Venture. The Arctic Goose Joint Venture is part of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, and involves researchers collaring geese in Canada, the United States, and Wrangel Island Russia.

Collars used in the Arctic Goose Joint Venture are 3-digit collars in a "broken" pattern. This means that the codes are not all in a row with the same alignment. The character that should be recorded first is the vertical character. The two horizontal characters are read last. It is important to sketch the collar or write it as "Vertical T Horizontal N5" or "T-N5" for the pictured Ross' Goose. This helps the researchers by indicating that you are starting with the correct character. With the Arctic Goose Joint Venture collars an expanded character set is often used with letters not used in other collaring projects. The characters may be stylized allowing the collars to be read when only half of the character can be seen. The most common character to cause confusion is the 9, which has the circle at the top transformed into a triangle.

Species and colors in the joint venture:

White-fronted Goose

Red: Alaska and Western Canadian Arctic

Blue: Central Canadian Arctic

Small forms of the Canada Goose and the Cackling Goose (formerly a subspecies of Canada Goose)

Yellow: Western and Central Canadian Arctic

Orange: Eastern Canadian Arctic

Lesser Snow Goose (includes Blue Goose)

Red: Wrangel Island Russia and La Perouse Bay, Churchill, Manitoba

Blue: Alaska

Black: Western Canadian Arctic

Yellow: Central Canadian Arctic

Green: Eastern Canadian Arctic

Ross' Goose

Pale (Quebec) Blue: Central Canadian Arctic

Yellow: Eastern Canadian Arctic

[MN Mike]

Strange....... I was just thinking about posting on this, I have seen some geese around wearing leg bands and last year I saw one wearing a neck collar, it looked like it was hot pink but maybe it was a faded color. Saw it in the spring migration.

I was just wondering who was using what band and what it meant.