Normally, I don’t look forward to seeing the Canada Geese on the lake near my Florida home. There are too many for the size of the water body, and they don’t migrate. Did I mention they’re loud and a bit aggressive?
And yet, one time each year, I hit the surface of the water with my kayak in search of these waterfowl: spring.
The bright yellow, fluffy chicks emerged only a few weeks ago. The adults have been paired off for months, building nests in the grassy edges of the lake (except one pair, who nested in a wooden pail at the end of someone’s dock) and finally the adorable babies emerged from their cream-colored eggs.
In these stressful times, the babies swimming after their parents or scuttling amongst the grasses make me smile. I paddle after them for just a moment, snapping a few photos as they run up on a grassy lawn.
Of all the pairs on the lake, at least half-a-dozen have goslings now, ranging from the recently hatched to “teenagers” nearly the size of their parents. Though I’m ignoring the ecological impact of too many geese, I can’t help but hope for more each morning!
Erika Zambello is a National Geographic Young Explorer who grew up in Maine, inspiring a deep interest in nature at an early age. She fell in love with birding after receiving a Sibley field guide for Christmas during her senior year in college, and has birded across the eastern seaboard and internationally ever since. To inspire others to protect birds and the environment, she has blogged for the Conservation Fund, Sarah P. Duke Gardens, Triangle Land Conservancy, and Duke University, and is writing a birding guide to Northern New England for Wilderness Adventures Press. She has founded OneWorldTwoFeet.com, and is currently living along the Emerald Coast in Florida's Panhandle. You can check out her exploration site or follow her on Instragram.
I love this report, Erika!
I live an hour north of Toronto, in a bedroom community called Newmarket, on the edge of town closest to some Conservation Authority forests, reserves, and reservoirs.
I live in a tiny suburban townhouse, and began feeding and taking an interest in local birds in my backyard and neighbourhood when we moved here in 2006 from downtown Toronto. I feed all varieties of birds in my small backyard, and inadvertently feed a weekly-visiting Cooper’s Hawk, who scavenges my immediate neighbour’s dense ornamental cedar tree “fence”, for a swallow to swallow.
Yeah, Nature is both beautiful, and brutal!
Speaking of brutal…
My neighbour, Rolf, HATES birds, and loves the hawk, who captures the cheery swallows it nabs in the cedar hedge. A fortnight ago, Rolf erected a 2′ Masonic-looking $27 cheap Home Depot, plastic replica Owl on the fenced portion of his yard, to scare away ALL birds from his property. Rolf HATES birds. I don’t know why. He just does. What Rolf didn’t bargain for was that the plastic Owl attractedmore than 10 different coloured, sized, shaped and types of intensely curious squirrels to it, in order for them to take selfies with it, or so it seems. The irony is, Rolf hates squirrels more than songbirds, and so this past weekend, Rolf erected his ladder, climbed it, cussing as he went, cut the zip-ties securing the Owl to the post, removed it with a flourish, turned and waved the Owl over his head, at the mocking squirrels in the trees on the other side of the sound buffer fence. It was hilarious, and I got it all on video, discreetly, from my upstairs bedroom window. Now, Rolf is reduced to sitting in his wicker patio chair, with his power hose poised in hand, ever ready to blast a squirrel off the top of the fence, or a bird in flight, or whatever, that comes within shooting range. I’d like to see him do that with the massive, marauding skunk who I’ve seen prowling his backyard at night when I let my dogs out to pee in mine. Five’ll get you ten, Rolf would hate skunks more than squirrels.
Half a block away is a local reservoir, where Canada Geese and Mallards return every spring, to lay eggs, raise their young, make lots of noise, and terrorize anyone who comes too close to their nest or feeding ground. My 10 year old Cockapoo, Charlie, loves to swim with them, and I think he fancies that he’s a Canada Goose, too! The geese grudgingly tolerate Charlie while he paddles around them, which only reinforces his delusion that he’s a goose! My Shihpoo, also ten years old, Snickers, knows better than to mess with Canada Geese, as small as he is (for the longest time, I thought he was a cat in dog’s clothing!), and instead he sniffs around the bullrushes and berry bushes, in search of a tennis ball. Don’t ask me HOW he finds one, EVERY TIME we go down to the pond. I mean, there are NO tennis courts anywhere near the reservoir, yet Snickers manages to walk home with us every time, proudly carrying his new-found, day-glo green tennis ball in his jaws, treasuring it and showing it off, like it were a crown jewel!
Twelve years ago, a record 14 pair of Canada Geese graced this pond. Then, the numbers dropped rapidly, from year to year, as well as the number of goslings, and that worried me. Two years in a row, I could not find ANY frog’s eggs, either, for my grand children, and that concerned me even more. Two years ago, thanks to urban sprawl, coyotes and red foxes started to inveigle their way into the ‘burbs. There was a few months last year, where I did not see ANY bird-life on the pond.
But last week, during an unseasonably-snowy May day (no, I was NOT dreaming of a White Mother’s Day yesterday, but I got one, anyway!), my dogs and I revisited the pond. I was delighted to see THREE paired Canada Geese! One pair was being followed around by 7 fluffy goslings! Now, I don’t know if they were the parents to all seven goslings, or if they were doing babysitting duty for the other two pair. No matter. They were a welcome sight, and though I tried to stop my Charlie from plunging into the cold water to swim with them, he did anyway, and they just shook their heads and let Charlie do his “swim thing”. Like Charlie always tells me, “I wasn’t born with these webbed paws so I could walk on hot, dry pavement all day!”
He has a point, there.