It ain’t Canada. Well, at least, considerable numbers of them aren’t Canadian. One of the most remarkable sights we saw when we went to Grand Coulee was the goslings. There were so many goslings, people! It seemed like every park we drove by or stopped at in the coulees was filled with geese and goslings. You’d see a handful of adults and infinite seas of babies. I have never seen this many goslings in my life.
I’ve seen little goose families scattered about western Washington, but this was like coming across Quiverfull colonies. You can see why they’d come here to raise families, though. Lotsa sunshine, abundant food, beautiful bodies of water, and bonza scenery.
Steamboat Rock State Park seems to be a favorite home for a lot of birds – we saw so many. But they were all outnumbered by the geese. Squee factor: near infinite. Look at these little gosling bums!
The grassy lawns were full of large goose families. So was the water.
I think the houses in the background may be on top of a giant gravel bar from the Missoula Floods. There is so much awesome around here, you guys, you don’t even know. I think the only thing for it is for all of you to come stay with me so we can go trekking together. I want to show you this for reals! Come in May so we can go see the bebbes! It is so beautiful.
On the way home, B and I stopped by Dry Falls and Sun Lakes. Guess what? There were more geese! Shocking, I’m sure. As we were driving back from Deep Lake, we saw a goose family swimming in a huge puddle beside the main road. Alas, by the time I’d stopped the car and got the camera unslung, most of the family was headed across the road to have dinner on the lawn. But one little baby was left behind with its face in the water!
It suddenly caught on it was being abandoned, and scrambled after its bros and sisters. Our UFD looks on.
You’re going to tell me it’s a female American Robin or similar, aren’t you? It’s going to be a bird I should know backwards and forwards, I just know it. Look, people, I can recognize geese instantly. Isn’t that enough?! Also, I identified a dove on the wing. Shame I was driving and couldn’t pull over in time to get a pic at the time.
Anyway, speaking of goslings, there are so many photos! You can find them on Flickr. Enjoy muchly!
UFD looks like a gray jay, but I usually think of them as being up in the mountains. Female robins look exactly the same as males, so that’s out. Could be a female blackbird of some sort. The female Brewer’s blackbird looks about right. Were there any other blackbirds about? I don’t usually see just one.
There an awesome pareidolia face in the rocks above the mini-fan!
Re the geese: Some time back we were walking around the lagoon at Stanley Park in Vancouver, BC. There was a large open playfield occupied by what must have been a couple hundred goslings, of all sizes. Standing guard around the perimeter were just five or six adults — far too few to account for all those babies. It was a goose daycare!
Dang, wish I could edit: The female brown-headed cowbird looks even better. It’s not uncommon to see mixed flocks of Brewer’s, cowbirds, and starlings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown-headed_cowbird
D’oh! The pareidolia comment was for the next post. Oh well.
Canada geese seem to do a sort of collective parenting, or at least the goose version of play dates or new mothers’ groups: I used to see large groups consisting of a lot of geese and three or more adults. (This was in New York City, which has a lot of Canada geese, many of them non-migratory.)
Canada geese seem to be very social birds in general: where I used to live, it was common to see a flock of geese on the ground, and another flying low overhead. And they would call back and forth, and agree on either “OK, we’ll come down” or “sure, it’s a good time to fly.” Or a few of the birds on the ground would join the flock heading over to a different park. After watching for several years, I came to the conclusion that Canada geese don’t like being alone. There were exceptions, but one goose was far more of an anomaly than one mallard or one herring gull, let alone one night heron or mockingbird. (Some of the small shorebirds, such as killdeer, also turned up in groups, but I didn’t see that sort of joining and splitting and recombining of flocks. On the other hand, this may be because we had geese around almost all the time, and killdeer only occasionally.
I’d say more gray jay than cowbird, actually.