Cackling goose Cackling goose The cackling goose ("Branta hutchinsii") is a North American bird of the genus "Branta" of black geese, which contains species with largely black plumage, distinguishing them from the grey "Anser" species. The black head and neck with white "chinstrap" distinguish this goose from all other geese except the larger Canada goose ("Branta canadensis") and the similarly sized barnacle goose ("B. leucopsis"). There are up to 5 subspecies of cackling goose, of varying sizes and plumage details. The female looks virtually identical but is slightly lighter and has a different voice. Some are hard to distinguish from the Canada
Branta material and comparisms with other subfossil bones assigned to the genus "Branta" it was redescribed as "Branta rhuax" in 2013. It was another prehistoric Big Island form and remains known only from some parts of a single bird's skeleton, which were much damaged because the bird apparently died in a volcanic eruption, with the bones being found in an ash-filled depression under a lava flow. A presumed relation to the shelducks proposed by Lester Short in 1970 was generally considered highly unlikely due to that group's biogeography, but more recently, bones of a shelduck-like bird have been found on Kaua‘i.