Re: OT but oh so sweet ;-)

On May 21, 7:22 pm, "Fifeshire Floozie" <h...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<deemsb...@xxxxxxx> wrote



"La N" <nilita2004NOS...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
 Fifeshire Floozie wrote:
This guy is an expert 'catcher' ;-)

Parade Leads Ducklings to Safety
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prRmQ-OldyE

Too cute!

Near where I live there are "Slow Down: Wild Turkeys Crossing"
signs. And,
indeed, those crazy birds are all over the place, flaunting their
plumage,
and taking their time crossing the highways and byways.
   My town is a wildlife sanctuary. Freakin' Canadian Geese crap
factories...can't shoot 'em, run 'em over, or even take a bat to
them.

I agree ... they *are* disgusting. Some junior baseball leagues gave
up playing because of the amount of goose poop on the ground!

About five years ago Vancouver's famous Stanley Park was so polluted
with goose poop that it was unsafe to walk on the footpaths for fear
of slipping and getting covered with poop. The city decided to
relocate all the geese they could get their hands on, and drove them
about 100 miles inland to a remote area, where they were released.
I asked one of the park workers how the project had gone and he said,
"Most of them passed us on our way back to the park..."

Geese are extremely well organized animals. When grazing, they eat
grass and anything else they can find - they leave their babies
behind, guarded by females who take turns as sentries, looking after
the goslings and attacking any one or thing, including dogs, which get
too close. They are very powerful fliers and fly in a V formation to
take advantage of the the slipstream of the lead goose and thus
minimize effort, changing positions from time to time. Considering
that they arrive annually from the High Arctic and that their
destination is Florida, it would seem to be just an annual annoyance,
but many have decided that Stanley Park is as good a place to bring up
their babies as anywhere else and have become permanent residents.
They are absolutely fearless in defence of their young and traffic
comes to standstill when they cross roads to take the kids to a new
area that hadn't yet been grazed, in a follow-my-leader formation.

We had a goose plague one year in the north of Scotland and discovered
that shooting at them was a waste of time as the bullets seemed to
glance off their feather quills. In one day, one group set out
sentries and the main group ate every bean growing in a 10-acre field
before taking off for pastures new. When ever we got too close, the
sentries would start squawking and the entire flock would take off and
move to another field, eating everything green they could find. The
following year no beans were planted and the voracious flock moved on
to find someone else's crop. It may sound heartless, but planting a
cash crop and then seeing it vanish as a goose lunch was extremely
frustrating, especially as within half an hour of placing automatic
shot firers to scare them away, the geese cheerfully ignored them. I
was ambivalent about the whole business, secretly cheering for the
geese, while the adults tore out their hair in frustration.

Here in Richmond they come barrelling through between the buildings,
honking happily as they spot food ahead in the local parks. Richmond
sits on the West Coast flyway and is a birdwatchers' mecca, but the
airport has to maintain a falconer and his birds to scare them away
from the runways, so that they don't get involved with airliner jet
intakes and cause crashes like the recent crash in the Hudson River in
New York.

The local eagles, which are supposed to catch salmon, have taken to
lining the trees on highways and live off road kill. They seem to have
become the Vancouver version of the vulture as they never kill
anything themselves, but wait until something else finds a victim and
then move in to take it over. It's very annoying for duck hunters, as
eagles with their superb eyesight wait until a duck is shot and then
zoom in to pick it up before the hunter's dog arrives, retreating
across the river to where their baby eaglets are waiting for lunch in
one of their massive nests. Whole groups can be seen circling
overhead, patrolling the area for anything that has died recently.
They have massive tallons and beaks and an unwinking remorsless stare
that says "Get lost or else!" They are best observed with lots of wire
mesh between you and the bird. However, I have sat beneath an eagle's
nest and heard the inhabitants cooing and chirping at each other, and
saw that the female was by far the larger bird. When they spot a
salmon, they crashdive into the water and grab it with their tallons,
straining to get airborne, and if unable to, flapping their way ashore
with the salmon trying to get free before settling down to eat the
catch. I've used them to find a salmon shoal as they take turns
catching salmon and a flurry of eagles in the distance means they've
located a shoal.
(Just filling in time until I start to feel sleepy).

.

Relevant Pages

  • Wonky Honky - "Vermin Control Service"
    ... 'Goose Whisperer' Bonds With Park Birds ... Netherlands - A gaggle of geese runs riot in the Hof van Delft ...
    (alt.gathering.rainbow)
  • Re: At the end of my rope!
    ... Lets see, you have four geese... ... Christmas goose, thanksgiving goose, ... Some of these birds produce nearly 180 eggs a year, ...
    (sci.agriculture.poultry)
  • Re: 20 gauge for Canada Goose?
    ... goose, a few new recipes has given me ... well as waterfowl of every type, including several Geese. ... you more margin of error on the bigger birds though. ... I quickly recovered and aimed at the first bird, shot, and then ...
    (rec.hunting)
  • Re: 20 gauge for Canada Goose?
    ... goose, a few new recipes has given me ... The main difference in the 20 and 12 is the amount of shot put in the air. ... well as waterfowl of every type, including several Geese. ... you more margin of error on the bigger birds though. ...
    (rec.hunting)
  • Re: Hatteras Island Wavesailing Access could vanish April 3
    ... resulting overwash seem to get the birds long before human interaction ... environmentalists wants total closure doesn't make sense to me. ... Chambers that were devised to the Canadian Geese on Pea Island. ... wasn't enough food because all of the "resident Geese had eaten it. ...
    (rec.windsurfing)
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