A biologist in Saskatchewan says there's evidence snow geese and Canada geese are interbreeding to produce a hybrid species.

Ducks Unlimited biologist Chuck Deschamps said he got a surprise recently when two American hunters shot a pair of birds that looked like a mixture of snow geese and Canada geese. The birds were shot in the Quill Lakes area, about 160 kilometres east of Saskatoon.

Oklahoma hunters Bryan Baker and Bill Jackson found the suspected hybrid. (Photo: Anne Sanderson, Courtesy Wadena News)

The birds had bills that looked like snow geese, but were bigger and had dark heads like Canada geese.

"It was kind of a mixture of them both," Deschamps said. "It's not common, that's for sure."

Still, for years, people in the area have spoken of the fabled Quill Lakes goose, he said. Now it appears there was something to the legend. The Quill Lakes goose may very well be the hybrid the American hunters found, he said.

Deschamps said he hopes to do DNA testing on one of the hybrid geese to confirm they are offspring of the two species.

As for how the hybrids came to be, Deschamp said one theory is that snow geese eggs are somehow ending up in Canada geese nests. In a real-life echo of the Ugly Duckling story, Canada geese mothers might be raising the snow geese goslings as their own. After that, the adult snow geese are mating with Canada geese.

"These birds are obviously imprinting on whoever raises them," he said.