The Mystery Of The Geese

Yesterday I gave you an unexpected update on the nesting goose I've been telling you about for awhile now. In the update we all finally got to see the little hatchlings. I also told you that I knew these were indeed the right geese. But how did I know?

If you think about it there could be any number of geese that these could be. The fact is that there was another family of geese out there on that lake too. I’ve been coming to this nature park almost every day for awhile now, so I know that there have only been these two goose families.

The other family are at least a few weeks older than the geese that hatched out of the eggs I saw, so they must be a little bigger than my update hatchlings. In fact this is that other family in these pictures. You would have to compare them together to see the difference but let’s see what I have.

What I have is pictures of them all together. I’ll only show you one of those here because I have limited space to post them, and if you look closely the picture quality is not as good as I really want it to be. I’ll discuss that last part in another post. Maybe some of you will find it interesting.

Anyway, you can see the older family of geese happily swimming on the water. They’re right out in front of the picture. The goslings are quite a bit bigger than the ones I showed you yesterday. There’s something interesting about that too, and I’ll show that to you another time too.

If you look way in the back at the shore, you will see my nesting goose and her happy family taking a break from the water. It was only for a short time and they were soon swimming again. None of this is the full story though. So what could be the final part of this mystery?

The final part of this mystery is the fact that these two families are all swimming together now. The families are still separate but the two families seemed to have formed a flock together. They were in the water together, and when they decided to go back to land they did that together too.

I watched as the nesting goose family waddled back to the shore with the older family courteously following behind. They all made their way up the hill together to their home at the top. The older family took their place where they have lived for awhile now, and the nesting family were next to them on the other side of a bush.

I took some more pictures while they settled in, and then I finally realized there would be no more action so I moved on looking for more interesting discoveries. A new flock has been formed. Maybe I’ll get some closer pictures next time. I’ll be watching both families.