Trego's Mountain Ear

The ice is out, and the island is waiting for nesting geese – but we’re getting ready to spend our first Summer here without Gander. He was slowed down last Summer when he left with the hatchlings – and we didn’t see him bring them all back for the last stop before they headed south.

Our lesser Canadian Geese all look alike – so it’s been behavioral patterns that have let us tell Gander from the other geese. The first behavior was that his consort nested on the island – usually alone – and he maintained sentry status swimming around the island and her nest. This year he isn’t back at his station.

It’s been fun watching him operate as the top goose. The first year he started training the goslings before they could fly, leading them onto the floating dock, and teaching landings as they would jump from the dock and into the water. I watched as he made the decision to get airborne to distract the eagle from the nest, then landing alongside me so that he had backup when the eagle followed him in. I figured Gander might have been semi-domestic, using people to reduce the risk from predators.

There was the year when one gosling had a wing problem – the little goose could almost fly. Gander would bring his flights by every other day, checking to see if the little one’s flying ability had improved. First, Goose, Gander and 7 hatchlings – then a flight of 16 geese. By the time they flew south that year, Gander led a flight of 42.

So I’m watching some new pairs beginning to nest. I’ve enjoyed watching my same regular neighbors raise their flocks – there was a particular amusement when two little coots hung out with Goose, Gander and their goslings. I doubt if anything is quite as poor at parenting as a coot, while Gander took parenting seriously.

I suspect I may enjoy these newcomer geese as much as I have enjoyed watching Goose and Gander raise their goslings – but the old geese really had worked out most of the challenges of successfully raising each year’s flock.