Mother Goose: A final word and photos of the goslings by a pond
By Gary Bogue
Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 6:31 am in Mother Goose, Mother Nature, nesting.
The Mother Goose family by Dan Rosenstrauch/Staff
I thought you’d all like to have some closure on this little adventure.
Here are some photos of Mother and Dad Goose and their 7 goslings feeding at a nearby pond in the Verizon building complex next door to the Contra Costa Times on Wednesday. They will stay here for the next month or so until the goslings are old enough to fly, and then all will take off to who-knows-where.
The Mother Goose family by Dan Rosenstrauch/Staff
It’s a large pond with lots of mallards and other geese. I met a nice lady there who feeds grain to all the waterfowl there every day. That’s helpful. She says there are a couple of other Canada geese nesting in the complex (not on any rooftops!), so our 7 little goslings will soon have some friends to play with.
The nice lady remembers our Mother Goose from last year when she showed up with 6 goslings. She says they stuck around until the chicks could fly and then sailed off into the sunset.
That sounds nice.
** And here’s a link to a beautiful little slide show by our photographers that shows you the whole hatching story, the jump off the rooftop and the walk to the grassy field next door, finally ending up at the Verizon building complex pond next to the Contra Costa Times:
http://www.bayareanewsgroup.com/multimedia/cct/2009/flash/0325bogueblog/index.html
See you all next year! Thanks for joining us! It’s been fun. /Gary
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March 26th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I loved the slide show. The video was a little hard to watch, but I’m glad I knew before I watched it that all the babies made it ok. How many floors up did they jump from? Incredible that none was hurt!
March 26th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
It’s a small roof over a loading dock, about equivalent in height to the roof of a one-story building. Approx. 12 feet high. We can look out the window of a second story hallway, and down onto the rooftop. I just read a paper about Canada geese competing with ospreys for treetop nesting areas around N. Calif. lakes.Those are REALLY tall (30-40 feet?) and the goose chicks REALLY have a long leap to make. I suspect there’s pretty high mortality for those goslings. Our Mama Goose has never lost a chick in all the years she’s nested on our little rooftop.
March 27th, 2009 at 10:08 am
[...] is probably still proudly enjoying his seven “It a gosling” cigars from this week’s hatching and launch from the roof at the Contra Costa [...]