Bird watchers flocked to southern California after a tundra bean goose was discovered at Magic Johnson Park in Los Angeles.
The tundra bean goose breeds in the Russian tundra and spends its winters grazing in agricultural fields in East Asia and western and central Europe. The goose has occasionally been spotted migrating through the United States, but seeing the bird in southern California was a rare sight considering it was more than 4,000 miles away from home.
The bird watchers noticed something wrong with the goose—its wing drooped, and it had a limp. Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center intervened and coordinated with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to catch the goose and conduct a physical examination.
On Monday, staff successfully captured the goose unharmed and brought it to the wildlife center hospital, where an X-ray revealed a BB pellet lodged in the goose's wing. The bird had a healed wing fracture from the injury, and the wildlife center's veterinarian will decide on the best plan of action for helping the goose.
"Why is this arctic bird here in Southern California?" Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center Executive Director Debbie McGuire told Newsweek in an email update about the bird. "A Tundra Bean Goose is not a common sight anywhere in the lower 48. They have only been spotted perhaps a dozen times from the West Coast to New York. And mainly in the northern states."
McGuire said that the goose was first spotted in March at Piute Ponds in the Mojave Desert, a popular stop for migrating birds. In mid-May, the goose was seen in Lancaster, California, and it had since acquired its limp and wing droop.
"Somehow the goose navigated a 60-mile flight to Magic Johnson Park. This is where the highly trained capture team from the Wetlands & Wildlife Care Center was able to net the goose," McGuire said.
It's not the first time the organization has been called to help wounded waterfowl in the area. In August 2022, the organization aided in an investigation with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife after discovering several ducks with severed bills—a horrific injury likely caused by a human that eventually led to the ducks' deaths.
In December 2022, the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center also observed a snowy owl in Cypress, California—another rare sight as there are less than 30,000 of these owls left in the world and they typically thrive in tundra landscapes.
However, it appeared that the owl was hunting and doing well, and so the center didn't intervene.
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