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Canada Goose — Part 2
Images coming soon.
And yet these wary creatures have been successfully domesticated and crossed with the common barnyard goose. Many stories are in circulation of wild geese that have been wounded, and placed among the farmer's fowls, where they have been made well and apparently content until a flock of migrants, passing above, called them to a wild life again; but the very birds that could be easily identified by the scars of old wounds, revisited the barnyard whenever their travels to and from the south permitted. All geese become strongly attached to certain localities. Ordinarily, a goose that has been wounded in the wing runs, if on land, but so awkwardly it may be quickly overtaken. If wounded when above or on the water, it will dive, and remain under the surface with only its nostrils exposed until all danger is over. Unless seriously hurt, it generally eludes capture. The thick coat of feathers, that have an even greater commercial value than its flesh, is the goose's suit of armor, impenetrable except at close range.
When surprised, a flock rises suddenly in great confusion; the large birds get in one another's way and offer the easiest shots the tyro ever gets; the honk, honk, k'wonk from many outstretched throats clamoring at once mingles with the roar of wings, as with slow, heavy, labored flight the geese rise against the wind--the point from which they must be approached if one is to get a good view of them. But order somehow comes speedily out of chaos once the birds are well launched in air. Double ranks are formed, with the leader at the point where the two lines converge, and the wedge moves on, far away if they have been terrorized by firing, but only a few hundred yards if they find there is no real ground for fear.
Flocks of wild geese go and come in the United States from September, when the young birds are able to join in the long flights, until early spring, when the great majority go north to nest. In some secluded marsh, by the shores of streams, or on the open prairie, far from the habitations of hungry men, the goose lays four or five pale buff eggs in a mass of sticks lined with grass and feathers, and sits very closely, while the gander keeps guard near by. An empty osprey's nest in a tree top, or a cavity in some old stump, frequently contains these eggs; but the goslings never return to the cradle once they have been led to water, for they are good walkers and swimmers from the start. After a thorough moult, which often makes the old birds as incapable of flying as the goslings, the detached families gather into flocks in September, when a few cold snaps in the Hudson Bay region suggest the necessity for migrating to warmer climes. On their arrival here they are very thin, worn out by the long journey; but the Christmas goose, as every housekeeper knows, is perhaps the fattest bird brought to her kitchen.