Greater White-fronted Goose

About the Greater White-fronted Goose

The Greater White-fronted Goose is the brown goose of Texas winters, named for the band of white feathers at the base of its pink-orange bill. Hunters call it the speckle-belly, after the black bars and blotches across its gray-brown belly, and its high, laughing call carries a long way across open country.

White-fronts nest on the Arctic tundra and arrive in Texas in fall, often traveling with Snow and Ross's Geese. They spend the winter on coastal rice prairies and on the playas and grain fields of the Rolling Plains and Panhandle, feeding in the fields by day and flying to water to roost. A big flock lifting off together is one of the great sights of a Texas winter.

These photographs come from Knox County in December 2020, where a huge mixed flock of geese was feeding and flying over the fields.