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Greater White Fronted Goose

© Fred J. Kane

Greater White Fronted Goose is also called the Laughing Goose, Speckle Belly Goose, Harlequin Brant, Gray Brant, Pied Brant, Prairie Brant, Spectacled Brant and Yellow Legged Goose. This graceful variety has an ivory colored beak, soft yellow legs and feet, brown back feathers, and black-and-white spotted chest and stomach feathers. The Greater White Fronted Goose is about the same size as the Snow Goose and its skin is white, as is the tips of its tail and the underside of its wings.

The juvenile Greater White Fronted Goose shows more gray and lacks the white face patch. Their bill is dull yellow or gray with a hint of purple tinge. Both the male and females wings when folded against their body are about 14 inches long and the male weighs about 25 pounds.

They prefer aquatic habitats near freshwater coastal marsh swamps and pool areas. Their general breeding-places are not known, though some of their eggs are occasionally found to the North of Churchill.

The courting ceremony includes head dipping, calling by each sex, neck forward and the fluttering of neck feathers. The Great White Fronted Goose mates from May to June each year. After courting and mating the birds build a nest in a shallow depression on the ground. in tall grass on the tundra, near marshes, ponds, lakes, rivers in swamps, open forest zones, coastal plains and on small marine islands. They line the nest with grass, feathers, and down.

These geese form monogamous pair bonds at about two years of age and breed at about three years old. After mating the female lays three to seven white eggs and only she sits on the eggs for about 3 ½ weeks. The nest is lined with grass, feathers, and down and always on a small hill with excellent visibility of the surrounding area.

The male Great White Fronted Goose stands guard during incubation and within twenty four hours of hatching the young geese are led to water.

Their diet consists of wheat, rice, barley, corn, sorghum, horsetails cotton grass, grasses, herbs, sedge, wheat, rice, barley, bulrushes, root stalks of cattails beechnuts, acorns, grain berries, insects, mollusks.

The Great White Fronted Goose winters on marshes, wet meadows, prairies, fields, lakes, and bays. The Great White Fronted Goose is protected by the state of Illinois. Once in awhile people observe the goose in Illinois but seldom see the bird in the winter.

During migration both going either north or south these geese always fly in a "V" formation.: The first geese to reach the southern areas arrive in August and are gone by October, They reach their wintering areas from September to November and they will associate with other species during migration.