The holiday season has ended and we will be off to Florida tomorrow if the possible ice storm leaves us alone.  We have returned from Princeton where we celebrated the holiday with Mom & Dad and Laurie Strehl.  We arrived New Year's Eve after dropping our children off at the Princeton Junction train station.  They preferred to spend the evening with friends in the Big Apple.  We had enjoyed their company from Christmas Eve.  Chuck and Elley built a new base for her snake cage and all enjoyed a wintery South Mountain.  

We plan a first stop in Florida at St. Augustine with friends and should arrive to Mom and Dad Woods on Wednesday.  We are taking only our auto and are packing frugally.  The motor home is in dry dock until we make plans for the spring.  

Started our "birding year" well on the first.  Dawn found us on the banks of the Raritan River at Califon, N.J.  There in an almost frozen mill pond we found some eight hundred Canada geese.   Many were sleeping.  Others honked as we walked suspiciously along the shore.  We could see their breaths mist in the 30 degree air.  A breeze chilled us severely.  We were not really dressed for this.  We continued to seek views and found only another birder on the opposite shore studying us through his glasses.

In a bit we crossed a bridge and joined him.  He had not found what we were looking for either.  He said this was his fifth visit.  We said it was our third. He was a resident of Princeton, an hour away.  We had stopped going to NYC a few weeks ago and then arrived at dusk coming home.  This was our last chance.  We had retired a bit early on New Year's Eve in Princeton in the hope of making an early visit here before returning with Chuck's parents to Pennsylvania.  

Now, after closely examining hundreds of geese we had failed to find a slightly smaller grayer goose with a black neck and breast and a white face.  This banacle goose, and probably many of the Canada geese wintering in this rural New Jersey town, was probably from Greenland.  For whatever reason it elected to keep company with the Canada geese, which migrate west, instead of with its compatriots which flew east to Britain and south.

Anne retreated to the car first, but Chuck too, a bit dispirited, followed to warm up.  He decided to move upstream to a park where we had found geese on our last visit.  Anne said it was too cold.  She would wait.  He succeeded in finding a few more hundred Canada geese and also made a good start on the Year 2009 bird list.  Bluebirds, sparrows, finches and a pair of crows were feeding.  Still, there was no barnacle goose.  

Warming again in the car we discussed options.  Anne wanted a coffee stop.  Chuck suggested they visit the Round Valley Reservoir to see what birds were active there before returning to Princeton.  Anne agreed to this if there was a coffee stop first.  Pulling away, Chuck said he wanted to make one more pass at the mill pond.  Rather than parking, we rolled slowly and stopping along the river road.  At one pause Chuck inquired of Anne if she could see the bird in the back at the middle of an opening between two trees.  He asked if it might have a white forehead.  This was tough to tell because the head was tucked foreward and away from us.  She couldn't tell, and we watched for a bit.  The bird raised its head slightly and turned.  Anne said she saw a black breast.  Chuck said he saw the white face.  He pulled the car around into a parking lot next to a church and we left the car to admire a waking barnacle goose.  It is a splendid gray striped goose with a black stocking front and a white face with a black line through the eye.  A very special bird to see in the United States except in a cage.  We feasted on it until cold again drove us back to the car.  

We glanced at the special goose one more time through the windshield before heading to the coffee shop and on to Round Valley.  There we saw several more "year birds" including three loons.   We found three more birders there who welcomed our report of the goose.  One told us that the bird was now officially "countable" according to the New Jersey rare bird committee.  So be it.  Chuck marked it in our list with "L" for life bird.  What a happy way to welcome the New Year and end a wild goose chase.