Goose from Greenland in NJ

A couple weeks ago I saw a Canada Goose with a yellow neck collar in Flemington, NJ.  I submitted the sighting to the bird banding lab, and today I got this great note about the bird I saw:

GC6 was indeed a goose that we banded in Greenland, part of a project to mark Greenland White-fronted and Canada Geese in west Greenland in the summers of 2008 and 2009, and your observations are of great interest because as you will see, this individual was reported from Connecticut last winter, but to date we have had no reports of its whereabouts this winter, nor have we had any news from the breeding areas in subsequent years, so we are delighted with your resighting!

The goose was first captured and banded on a lake simply known as Lake C to the catching team (very few lakes in this area have Greenlandic names) which is at 67°06’26.6"N 50°28’38.4"N in an area known as Isunngua, immediately north of the airport at Kangerlussuaq in west Greenland. This has been a study area for our investigations on and off over many years. On that occasion, it was banded with a yellow collar, a yellow tarsus band bearing the same engraved comnbination and a metal Copenhagen Zoological Museum leg band. It was an adult male captured on 15 July 2007, part of a catch of 10 adults and 23 juveniles.

Very cool!  So keep your eyes out for geese with colored bands around their necks, and if you see one, try to see the letters or numbers on the band and report them to the banding lab!  There's sure to be a cool story behind that bird!