Swan Goose

How to identify

Field marks

1. Front of neck white, nape rufous-brown, with a sharp boundary
2. Long black bill forms a straight line with the forehead
3. A single narrow rufous-white ring at the base of the bill
4. Upperparts gray-brown with buff feather edges; legs and feet deep orange-yellow

Male, female and young

Male usually larger and more robust; juvenile darker, without the white stripe at the base of the bill or dark streaks on the belly.

Voice

Gives a typical goose call in flight, a drawn-out rising note.

Similar species

Greater White-fronted Goose

Swan Goose has an all-black bill and very little white on the forehead, confined to a single fine white ring at the base of the bill.

Lesser White-fronted Goose

Swan Goose has an all-black bill and very little white on the forehead, confined to a single fine white ring at the base of the bill.

Where and when it's recorded

Swan Goose has been recorded at 563 of the 8,171 birding hotspots we track, in 35 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

To protect this bird from disturbance, we don't list exact sites.

Countries and regions with the most records

ChinaUnited StatesMongoliaPortugalSouth KoreaSerbiaGermanyCanada

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The swan goose (Anser cygnoides) is a large goose with a natural breeding range in inland Mongolia, Northeast China, and the Russian Far East. It is migratory and winters mainly in central and eastern China. Vagrant birds are encountered in Japan and Korea (where it used to winter in numbers when it was more common), and more rarely in Kazakhstan, Laos, coastal Siberia, Taiwan (China), Thailand and Uzbekistan.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

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