Cue lame animal documentary music

As far as animals are concerned, we mostly only see common (finches, sparrows, etc.) birds on the golf. It's expansive but still enclosed within an (sub)urban area, so I don't think there's much of a way for lots of fauna to thrive there. Still, I've seen wild hare a few times (we have occasionally seen them in our front yard at the old house too, as well as racoons and a porcupine), and this morning, I've seen a whole nursery of baby Canada goose...

So the picture is not the best, because I couldn't get much closer to them, but they were really cute! There were about a dozen of them, with four adult ones. I had never seen them this close -they were impressive, and much taller than I had imagined. Very gracious, too -quite swan-like, but with an everyday outfit instead of a flashy white one.

They were all together on the lawn, but they immediately retreated to the water when I slowly walked towards them. The one on the forefront was very protective, and kept hissing at me to go away.

It made me curious so I researched them a little. They are among the most "talkative" animals, with at least twelve different sounds that apply to different contexts. Unsurprisingly, the "hissing" was a very clear warning (I didn't need to speak goose to understand that!)

They are also monogamous, staying with the same partner throughout their lives. Both the male and female take care of the young, and they usually lay their eggs at the same place where the female was born, year after year. Little goose chicks stay with their parents for about a year. These ones were probably just a couple of weeks old.

So what I saw was two families, who apparently teamed together to raise their young. When they have babies, the geese lose the feathers that enable them to fly for about six to eight weeks, which explains their current occupation of an unusual territory. Even though their return here is always much celebrated in the spring, they are only passing through, since they spend their summers in a milder climate up North. The two geese in the back were probably the female ones, and the hissing one was certainly the alpha male: that's their protective pattern, the females leave with the chicks, while the male bravely stays put and tries to scare the intruder away.

They often have a few nests close together like that (usually on small islands, just like the one there), and will gladly take care of each other's kids, even spontaneously adopting ones that are lost or whose parents have died. Isn't it cool?