The Geese Herald Spring

We marked a full year in the new house this month, so we're starting to see some events repeat, and first among them is the arrival of the Canada geese. Eighteen of them have arrived, just like last year. They come and go, and two of them are here more often than the others, so we suspect they're the pair who had the goslings last year.



They're noisy, territorial, and messy....but as long as they bring spring with them, that's perfectly fine.

Return Visitors

Yesterday a lone Canada goose appeared at the pond. This morning, there were 20.



They disappeared with a mournful honk in the early summer, and we weren't sure if they had gone to a neighbor's pond, or left the area altogether.



Now they're back. They're noisy and messy, but surprisingly enjoyable to have around. And this time we have a new young cat who's already shown a tendency to try to bond with other animals.

This should be interesting...

How Many Animals Do We Have?

When I started this blog after we moved to the country, I said that we had two horses, three goats, three ducks, and two cats. Well, we're down one horse since the owner took the pony away, but we're up one white domestic duck...and 14 Canada geese.

We started with two Canada geese. They'd come visit the pond for short periods of time. Then it became three, and they stayed longer. The two had babies, and eventually took the babies to the pond across the street.

Then one day there were six Canada geese, and they started staying for long periods of time. Then more started coming.



Until one day we counted, and there were 14.



You may have guessed how this came about. We feed. We were feeding 'scratch' to the ducks, and put some out for the geese one day as well, and then more as more came. Oops.

They don't really cause any problems, though. They hiss if we come too close, but back away if we keep coming. They make a lot of noise on landing, which happens in the morning, and take-off, which happens in the evening. They spend most of the day on the grass, and at dusk they sail out into the middle of the pond like some bizarre armada. They must leave after dark, because they come back in the morning.



I had wondered why they don't seem to get hunted, but then read that they're protected by the Federal Migratory Bird Act of 1918, which makes it a crime to harm a migratory bird. They mate for life, and are said to bring their young back to the breeding ground the following year after migrating. Maybe that's why we have all these geese but no goslings after the first batch? Maybe these are the young?

No way of knowing, of course, but kind of fun to imagine it's true.

Scratch Stupor

'Scratch stupor' is the technical term for what these ducks and Canada geese are suffering from.



Well, actually, I just made the term up, but it's what happens to waterfowl when they eat too much scratch, which is a commercial waterfowl food you buy from the store. They let out their belts a couple of notches, and sit around in a stupor.

Now picture this....these ducks and geese have a 2-acre pond, full of algae, insects, vegetation -- all the good, natural things waterfowl are supposed to love to eat.

Instead they gorge on store-bought food.

Stupid waterfowl...



On the other hand, they have a pond full of natural food....and we go buy expensive commercial food for them, just because they seem to like it.

Stupid city people....

Bye, Bye, Babies

I was showering this morning when I heard my husband calling me frantically from outside. I threw on some clothes, and went running out front, wet hair and all. There were the geese parents and the babies in our front pasture, the one by the road. My husband said they appeared to be trying to get to the road, but because our new fencing has tighter holes -- to keep predators from coming in -- they couldn't get out.

We realized that they were probably trying to get to our neighbor's pond. The man across the street has about 300 acres, with a large pond, and we understand from the neighbors that the geese may have come from there originally. They apparently had returned every year to breed, and for some reason, chose our pond this year.

They were hurting....they were walking up and down along the fence and couldn't figure out what to do. We think they had been doing it for several hours, and the babies were getting tired.

We finally got them out the gate into the front yard, and from there to the driveway, so they could choose whether to go across the street, or back down to our pond.

They chose across the street...(toward the wooden fencing)





Bye, babies. It was fun having you for a while....

Honest, It's Them, Not Me

I don't see how I could get any closer to the goslings. They were right on the other side of the fence, which is the only reason the parents let me get close enough to take these pictures. But they're still fuzzy. It's because they're FUZZY. It's not the camera -- it's them.




They're adorable, but they defy the camera.



It's hard to get much cuter than this. I wish you could actually see them.

Lots of Characters in Our Little Play...

We were sitting on the deck tonight watching the little tableau spread before us. The three goats were play-fighting, head-butting each other and running around. The two geese-parents were closely watching the three miscellaneous geese who have shown up to hang around. (Apparently the word is out that we feed.) There were occasional geese fights, with lots of head bobbing as warning first. The four ducks, who are now a group, were wandering around in the midst, and Gus the horse was quietly feeding in the background, surrounded by a flock of cowbirds.



Lots of animals....but we know who's number one, don't we, Gus?



When you weigh 1200 pounds, you're the boss.

It's Not the Garden of Eden Out Here...

Oh, wait, there was a snake there too, wasn't there? Never mind. I guess this IS the Garden of Eden.

This is a brown water snake, completely harmless to humans, but disturbingly interested in our goslings.



In the last post's pictures of the goslings, where their parents were leading them onto the shore, this was the reason.



We saw the snake heading from across the pond toward the near shore so we ran down to get the pictures. It met up with another snake near here, then they split off, and this snake headed for where the geese parents and babies were browsing in the shallows. The geese swam away for a while, then headed up onto the shore. They didn't seem particularly perturbed, so I am assuming they don't consider the snake a serious threat, since it was clearly visible.

Still, getting the babies onto the shore seems like a good precaution. I was pretty glad to be on the shore myself.

I was reading up on the brown water snake, and a herpetologist was complaining about how many of them get killed through being mistaken for the poisonous water moccasin. He said that the snake will drop out of a tree onto a fisherman's boat, and the first thought is 'kill, kill, kill,' and 'then getting the bullet-holes out of the boat is almost an afterthought." Can't you just picture it?

The Goslings...

Some more pictures of the goslings. I'm having to use the camera's zoom to get the feature, then crop to get more details, so it's a little fuzzy....but then the goslings are a little fuzzy themselves.



Aren't they adorable?



We're so happy about this. I can't tell you how hard we tried to get ducklings on the pond at the other house. We bought four female ducks at different times. The first had some mental health issues. The last we saw her, she was walking down the middle of the road in the subdivision, quacking. She never came back. The other two got eaten by hawks. The fourth one turned out to be a male. (Oops.)

My husband just came in to say that one of the goslings puffed out the fuzzy little stubs it calls wings and made a run at one of the peacefully drowsing ducks, which of course just ignored the little fuzzball. The ducks and the new-parent geese are co-existing just fine. It's the other geese pair that's being warned to stay away. I've been trying to read up on whether geese are actually a danger to each other's babies but haven't found anything.

Why Are the Geese Fighting? Big News

We've had two pair of Canada geese living at the pond for at least a month now. They squabble a bit, but for the most part have been co-existing. Today while the one pair was swimming, the other pair came back from wherever they'd been, and when they landed a huge fight broke out.



Here's a closer view. They were pretty far from me so I couldn't get much detail. I'm assuming it was the two males fighting.



And here's why -- we have goslings! You can barely see them in between the two proud parents here.



We saw them for the first time this morning. We had no idea they were expecting! Supposedly the female goose incubates her 5-7 eggs for a solid month, rarely leaving them and guarded by the male. We saw none of that; she's been visible frequently the whole time. Then all of a sudden we have five adorable, roly-poly, fuzzy yellow-and-gray babies. According to the web, the babies lose their yellow within the first week, so these babies are brand new.

We'll work on getting better pictures. For the moment, we're giving them their space.