A Tale of Two (or more) Geese

This all happened back in April this year.

I think I held off on writing about this, because I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Enough time has passed, and I'm still not sure what happened exactly, but maybe that's the interesting thing.

I was spending quite a lot fo time at my local conservation areas, as I talked about in a previous post. During one of my trips to take photographs, I saw something I'd never seen before: geese sitting on the cliff edge. It's definitely not the first place I'd expect to see geese. There was one spot in particular, where there would always be a pair or just a single goose, every time I visited.

I would sit for quite a while in that spot, enjoying the calm forest and watching the geese. It was a good tranquil place to sit, maybe that's why the geese chose it? Hopefully I didn't ruin the tranquility too much for them!

After some time, one of the geese stood up to reveal a clutch of eggs it was incubating.

So not only were these geese sitting on the cliff edge, but they were nesting here. I looked up Canada goose nesting habits, and found that they prefer to nest by or surrounded by water. So, not a cliff then. Reading more, it sounds like the female tends to stay with the eggs to incubate them, while the male stays near to stand guard. Maybe this explained why I'd sometimes see one goose, sometimes two, but one would always be sitting, and if there were two, the second would always be standing nearby.

I spent quite a lot of time with the geese.

Then one day, I went to see them in their usual spot and they were gone. All that was left was some down and eggshell fragments.

I feared the worst. Maybe an animal, perhaps a raccoon, had got to the eggs and the geese had abandoned the nest site?

A couple of weeks later, I went back to what had been their nest area and they were back! Or were they? I would say my ability to tell two Canada geese apart is pretty much non-existent.

I still wonder about the story of these geese. Were there two couples, both using the same fairly secluded nesting site one after the other? Was it the same pair, and the first clutch met some unpleasant fate, so they rebuilt the nest a tried again?

Thinking about what I've read about Canada goose nesting habits, it does sound like something went wrong with the first brood. According to an article on birdfact.com, Canada geese will reuse the same nest site throughout their lives, and if a brood fails for some reason, they may attempt a second brood 14 to 20 days later. The timing of them returning in particular makes me wonder if something bad did happen to their first clutch of eggs.

I hope if that's the case, that their second brood was successful.