Goose report

No knitting content here....just more news. Another occurance in the past few weeks was two canadian geese decided to take up residence in my backyard. I am really not a fan of these geese, don't get me wrong, they are pretty, but they tend to make a mess. I had to stop feeding the songbirds because they would rip up the grass to get to the seed. And there was that wonderful time where the only lake nearby that actually had water in it was the one off my backyard. The joy of counting 60 geese(yes, 60 geese) in your backyard that is less than a quarter of an acre in size is pretty darn frightening. Yep, my grass was really green that spring.

So, anyway, I do enjoy watching the baby geese grow each year. I have picture after picture of these babies as they change from yellow, to grey, to the traditional colorway. It was difficult to ignore the messes they left up and down my driveway as they went on walkabout. And this year was the first year that it was actually in my backyard! I was prepared for the aggression from the male, so I pretty much stayed out of the way and tried not to bug them too much. I think this must have been the first year for this pair though. After 5 eggs, this was the result:

Most adorable, but apparently not meant to be. It appears that the same night my grandmother died, this little guy/gal passed on as well. Based on my neighbor's observation, since I was a little occupied and rarely home last week. I'm not sure what happened. We have a number of hawks in the neighborhood, so I had been stealing myself for him to not make it after he did this little walkabout without parental supervision. But it looks like he died in the nest. The adults abandoned the nest towards the end of last week so I buried the baby and disposed of the eggs.

One more shot to give some perspective on the tinyness of this bird, taken last Monday before I left for work:

I can't help but feel bad for them, but hopefully they will do better next year (maybe in another yard!).