My parents volunteer at Tri-State Bird Rescue, and there were four young goslings that had been staying at the clinic that were ready to be released. My dad brought them back to our house to have them adopted by the colony of geese living behind our pond.
The colony of geese have been hanging around our pond for about three or four years now; they've been coming up to feed in the garden behind our house (at a tray that was originally set up for songbirds, but that they discovered), but aside from being a little more tolerant of Humans � they know we bring some food for them � they're still entirely undomesticated. My parents named the first two Ricky and Lucy, and they've since become the apparent Alpha pair of an extended family.
Ricky apparently heard the peeps of the goslings (who were kept enclosed in a bottomless box so they could rest and feed on grass) and came up to investigate. By the time my dad came out, Lucy and another pair had come up with their six goslings in tow to see what Ricky was honking so loudly about. When my dad opened the box, they all made a break for it � the oldest went out right away and eagerly escaped, but the three younger ones (apparently no more than two weeks old) were a bit more cautious. It took about ten minutes, but they all ended up tottering off with the rest of the family � although a couple apparently felt a little more comfortable following my Dad!
The video is quite simply amazing � the male goose immediately started trying to guide and protect the goslings that were hanging around, and confronted my Dad (hissing and flapping his wings) when he had to pick up the stragglers and encourage them to join the flock a couple times. I believe that geese are one of the few species that so willingly adopt young that they did not hatch themselves.
Unfortunately the video runs short by about two minutes, just after it ends, my Dad took the last, stubborn gosling closer to the rest of the flock, down by the trees, and it finally took the hint and joined his new adoptive brothers and sisters. (Also, the quality of the video is rather shitty � but that happens when you need to compress a 7-minute, 100+MB video file into something a bit more reasonable for Web publishing!)
Posted by bX (Member # 419) on :
The video would not play back for me...
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
On the bright side, it looks like I've found some kind of bug in iWeb...
![[Wink]](wink.gif)