![]() Additional funding was provided by the JWST Mission office at Space Telescope Science Institute to improve capabilities for 3-D data visualization. SAOImageDS9 development has been made possible by funding from the Chandra X-ray Science Center (CXC) and the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Center (HEASARC). GUI elements such as the coordinate display, panner, magnifier, horizontal and vertical graphs, button bar, and color bar can be configured via menus or the command line. All versions and platforms support a consistent set of GUI and functional capabilities.ĭS9 supports advanced features such as 2-D, 3-D and RGB frame buffers, mosaic images, tiling, blinking, geometric markers, colormap manipulation, scaling, arbitrary zoom, cropping, rotation, pan, and a variety of coordinate systems. It requires no installation or support files. It provides for easy communication with external analysis tasks and is highly configurable and extensible via XPA and SAMP.ĭS9 is a stand-alone application. DS9 supports FITS images and binary tables, multiple frame buffers, region manipulation, and many scale algorithms and colormaps. It would be interesting to know if he is with a flock of snows or Canada geese when he comes through next spring.SAOImageDS9 is an astronomical imaging and data visualization application. This snow goose seemingly has been adopted by the flock of Canada geese. The birds just appear to want the leadership, company and safety offered by being in a flock, and any flock seems to be all right with them. ![]() Molting snow geese can outrun many predators.ĭisoriented, lost and injured birds often join other flocks. Within the first three weeks of hatching, goslings may walk up to 50 miles with their parents from the nest to a more suitable brood-rearing area. Snow geese make epic journeys by air, but they are impressive on foot, too. But this snow goose was flying solo hoping to catch up with his mates, while sharing company with his big cousins. Their diet is entirely vegetarian, consisting of grasses and grains, grazed from damp soils or even shallow water. They spend the colder seasons in southern coastal marshes, bays, wet grasslands, and fields. They fly south for the winter in huge, honking flocks that may appear as a “V” formation or simply as a large “snowstorm” of white birds. Snow geese are harbingers of the changing seasons. Thousands of “honkers” migrate north and south each year, filling the sky with long v-formation. The big, black-necked geese with their signature white chinstrap mark are a familiar and widespread bird of North Idaho. The flock of Canada geese he was with was unmistakable. I always surmised it was a safety in numbers instinct and that the birds will just join in with a flock. I have seen one or two snow geese in a flock of Canada geese during migration in previous years. The other possibility is a snow goose which has a minor injury, not enough to stop it flying, but enough to stop it from migrating with the other snow geese when they left early from the Arctic. I was curious if the bird might be an escaped white domestic goose. I wondered what was going on here is nature playing a trick on me? At first glance I thought it was an albino Canada goose but on closer inspection noted it was too small. The most popular breeds for small flocks are Embden, Toulouse, African, Chinese, and Pilgrim. The white goose hanging around with the Canada goose flock had my curiosity up. Other geese that can be used for meat and egg production are the African, Sebastopol, American Buff, Saddleback Pomeranian, Chinese, Tufted Roman, and Canada breeds, with the Embden, Toulouse, and African all attaining adult weights in excess of 19 pounds. Geese are birds which prefer to be in flocks, ideally of their own kind. A white goose was setting comfortably among a flock of Canada geese. I came across an interesting sight last week when approaching Myrtle Pond on the Kootenai Wildlife refuge. This Snow Goose feels at home flying with a flock of Canada geese.
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