Welcome, stranger!

Exotic birds are kept in zoo-like collections. Sometimes they escape, and mostly they don't survive. But a few do survive and thrive and build up wild breeding populations. Of course they are still foreigners, "shouldn't be here" birds, at least many birders are puritanically dismissive about them. But not me. I think some of our feral birds are gorgeous and I actively seek them out. Today, thanks to Hawkeye Hopkins, we were able to enjoy the spectacle of twenty of them grazing so close to the roadside that we could almost touch them. If you want to know why Alopochen aegyptiacus - literally the "Egyptian fox-goose" - is so called, just look at its amazing face. And when it flies, it shows two ginormous white wing patches. Damn, it's a beauty! I wish we had more of them in our countryside, and yah boo sucks to the puritans.