Let’s catch up with the wood ducks

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I know I tend to cycle around the same handful of photo and video subjects herein, but let’s face it: I have easy access to several different forms of wildlife without even leaving the property, so this is what I’m going to have the most photos of, as well as being able to observe behavior better than I ever have before. At least I haven’t fixated on just one subject…

So yes, it’s the wood ducks (Aix sponsa) again, with video of course, and it’s a little long because I haven’t done an update in more time than I thought.

Some notes about the audio: the Azden shotgun mic, at one point, was producing a lot of hiss and crackle, likely from bad contacts within the XLR to 3.5 adapter cord, but I think that’s corrected now – I have no way of monitoring the audio that’s being recorded by the 7D, so this stuff sneaks in. For various clips, I switched back and forth between the Azden and the parabolic dish with the Sony lavalier mic, finally settling on the Azden based on some tests with thunder. Both, however, produce a certain level of background hiss in combination with the 7D. I won’t go into detail here, but I found a way to correct this to some extent, though it was imperfect for some of the clips in this video and will be refined further with subsequent work. It’s also time-consuming.

Meanwhile, we have some images of the players.

trio of male wood ducks Aix sponsa, one perched in tree, catching late afternoon light breaking through trees
Like I said, they usually avoid the light that makes their iridescence shine, so I’m always on the lookout for when they don’t, though conditions don’t always allow the best views.

male wood duck Aix sponsa perched in tree catching afternoon light
This is naturally cropped a bit, since I can’t get this close even with the 600mm – working on various ideas for that. I need something like this (shamelessly snagged from the webbernets):

small cubby disguised as bush, from unknown online source
… though I’d either have to get into it long before any ducks (geese/deer/nutria/etc) showed, or have a tunnel access – not happening anytime soon. I’m still considering a couple of viable options, but the biggest aspect right now is having an opening for the long lens that also allows a bit of tracking yet doesn’t attract the ducks’ attention; this might be nigh impossible.

Some better views of that buck, during a different visit:

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus buck sporting very fine single antlers
I think those delicate little antlers indicate that this is this season’s brood, less than a year old, and whether this was any of the fawns we saw visiting earlier I cannot say. It wasn’t inclined to pop into the brighter light, I can say that.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus buck sporting very fine single antlers
The folklore when I was growing up in central New York, where deer hunting is a religion, was that the number of points on the antlers denote the number of years old the deer was, which is total nonsense, one of the many reasons I pay little attention to what people tell me unless they’re an actual biologist.

Back to the ducks.

quarter of wood ducks Aix sponsa catching near-direct sunlight on pond and showing variety of colors in plumage
Can you see why I want to get closer? The colors that pop up from this species, especially the males, are stunning, post-modernist renditions that vary depending on how the feathers are sitting. Plus the iridescence on the head that changes with the light angle (which is hell to try and mimic if you’re painting it.)

Even though the geese have only been back for about two weeks, we can already get a lot closer to them than the ducks will allow, in part because geese don’t fear too many things, and they only slipped off to a safe distance when we approached the pond edge to put down more corn, so they could actually see us do it. This allowed them to associate us with corn and thus become slightly more habituated to us, though nowhere near as much as earlier in the year. The wood ducks, on the other hand, simply fly off when they see us virtually anywhere in the yard and so never even get the chance to habituate; it appears to be possible, but we’re not sure what it might take, nor are we sure that we really want to do this, given that they’re hunted routinely and so should be wary of people.

Anyway, still examining options to get closer for better pics and video – we’ll see what happens.

Estate Find XLVII

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

This week, we have a couple of subjects that help lead into further posts, at least one of which may come later on today – I’m starting to get a small stockpile again. So let’s get into it.

great blue heron Ardea herodias wading at edge of Turtle Island
With the clearing of the duckweed, which may be due to the appetites of the ducks and geese, or the temperature dropping below their growing range, or both, the water is now clear enough that the wading birds can see prey within, and so at least one great blue heron (Ardea herodias) has been coming around – this image was from yesterday early morning, and the heron was already aware of my presence up on the deck better than 30 meters off. In a few moments, it stalked away from the tree out into the open, enough to take flight and head towards The Bayou.

great blue heron Ardea herodias wading further into open preparatory to taking flight
I have to admit, this is pretty spooky for herons because I was much too far away to pose any threat, and it’s not like herons have a lot to fear from just about anything in the area regardless. Yet it was too much for this one, and so it left quickly, but not before I snagged a few frames.

Aaannndd it’s getting to be ‘that season,’ which is when the camellia (Family Theaceae) bushes start to bloom.

camellia Theaceae blossom
I have to admit, having winter-blooming flowers is a good idea, and I was surprised this past winter at how quickly the honeybees would find them as soon as it got anywhere near warm enough. This particular bush is the only one blooming so far, and it was the same last year; we have several others on the property and all are in bud right now, preparing to bloom on their own schedule. Does this mean they’re different cultivars/subspecies, or the conditions for this one are better, or what?

camellia (Family Theaceae) blossom with two neighboring buds
These are not the only thing blooming right now either, but what I will feature later on are things that are still blooming, one a little surprisingly. Getting back to the camellias, however, these are the kind of evergreens we can deal with, unlike the pines that have made their own little mark in this image, the needles draped across the branches (and across damn near everything else in the yard, despite the fact that we only have three pines at the edge of the property.) No sure why so many people in this state find the pines so appealing, but at least in this neighborhood, a lot of cypress and camellias were established to offset them a little…

Let’s see, I think… frogs

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Working my way through the folder of images that I need to do something with, and figured that it’s now time for a few more frogs, si? I mean, oui?

The first three to be featured all came on November 9th, when the weather became unseasonably warm and the frogs were out thinking, Damn, that was a short winter! This one, at least, should have known better given its perch.

green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus perched on laceleaf Japanese maple in peak autumn colors
A green treefrog of course (Dryophytes cinereus,) contemplating life on the branches of a laceleaf Japanese maple that was hitting peak autumn colors and not budding out with new leaves for the spring. It was still a good day for it, true enough. And yes, I purposefully chose this angle between the leaves – did you really think otherwise?

unidentified small frog, likely cricket frog Acris crepitans or Acris gryllus, spooked from grass to pond's edge
Scaring up one of these was also a purposeful act: I was wandering along the pond edge knowing that the weather would likely bring some amphibians onto shore, and it was simply a matter of spotting them when they leapt away and creeping up once they’d paused again. This is quite small, as the cypress needles and duckweed might indicate, roughly 15mm in body length. I’m still not sure what this is, but I’m leaning towards cricket frog from the warty skin and size – it just lacks any of the markings that tend to distinguish them. That would make it either a southern cricket frog (Acris gryllus) or northern (Acris crepitans.) There are potentially some much less common species around here that look a lot cooler, and I’m keeping my eyes out for them, but so far nada.

southern leopard frog Lithobates sphenocephalus hiding out in debris at edge of pond
This one went unidentified until just now, since its hiding place in the debris at the edge of the pond obscured all identifying markings – but then I went back through the various frames that I’d gotten and found, in one too far out-of-focus to keep (I’m due for a sorting session again,) the white spot on the tympanum (eardum) that pegs this as a southern leopard frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus.) Far larger than the previous maybe-cricket frog, as evinced by the cypress needles again, this one was a lot less cooperative in letting me get better pics, leaping away as I gently tried removing some of the stuff that it was hiding beneath. It’s a shame, because we deserve a better look at their markings.

And now going back, wow, to September 16th for this one:

minuscule juvenile green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus perched on rosemary plant
I think I was posting too many green treefrogs at the time, which is easy enough – they’re perhaps even more numerous than the Carolina anoles. But the size of this one becomes apparent once you realize that it’s perched on a rosemary plant, provided you’re familiar enough with rosemary anyway. Or the proportions of the eyes, head, and legs probably says enough, too, but suffice to say it’s not any bigger than the maybe-cricket.

Oh, what the hell – let’s go even further back, because I keep seeing these images in the folder and not dumping them out.

pair of Copes grey treefrogs Dryophytes chrysoscelis in amplexus on lemon tree
This, and the following, date back to May 8th – 2023. Just never got around to posting them. But I remember hearing a Copes grey treefrog (Dryophytes chrysoscelis) calling in the backyard, and tracked the calls down to find these two already in amplexus, the position they adopt preparatory to mating. To my mind, the calls should have then ceased, so either I was wrong, or they settled their courtship right before I discovered them, or there was another in the immediate area. Which is possible, because they’re on one of the potted lemon trees right near an open water barrel. Leaving them be for just a few minutes and returning, I found they were finalizing their plans.

pair of Copes grey treefrogs Dryophytes chrysoscelis in amplexus examining a water barrel as a spot for eggs
This is now right on the edge of the barrel and peering inside. Once the female (the larger one on the bottom) has chosen a suitable tadpole nursery, she’ll pause in the water and release her eggs, which the male will then fertilize externally by releasing his sperm; his position increases the probability of this happening, though at times you may find multiple males clinging to the same female, stacked up as it were. Had it not been a black barrel, I might have stuck around to record this for posterity (‘posterity’ being the screen name of this weird guy that keeps asking me for creepy amphibian pics,) but nothing would be able to be seen in such conditions regardless of lighting. Some pics here will give you the idea though, despite being a different species.

That’s a few more down, but not enough. We’ll be right back after these commercial messages…

Nominal nominal nominal

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

So, [you ask because you’re following everything I post with due excitement] how did Monday morning’s pursuit of the Leonids and aurora borealis go? And I, being the suspicious type that tries to detect subtle impish questions that you already know the answer to, pause just long enough to convey this suspicion before plowing ahead anyway.

In short, no better than any other time I’ve tried this, which is to say, I accomplished nothing that I’d be distraught about if I accidentally deleted the images from the folders. There were just two visible instances that we even had a ‘shower,’ which isn’t impressive at all since I’ve seen more during non-showers when I used to walk the roads at night in central New York. One was literally as far from the camera’s view as possible and still actually be visible, exactly opposite the direction the camera was aimed and right on the horizon. The other, less than 2 minutes later, was only 120° off-axis. Both were so brief and short that I would have recorded only a short streak in the 18mm focal length I was using, had they actually occurred where I was aiming. I gave it up after roughly an hour.

As for the aurora? Perhaps ever so slightly better than that, but in concept only. This was the view to the north:

view of northern sky from North caroina showing perhaps very faint pink banding from aurora borealis
First off, there’s a town up there about 25 km away, so I expected a certain amount of glow from the horizon, but if you look close, there’s some faint pinkish banding within that glow, plus the glow is a little more green than I’d expect from either current LED streetlamps or the old sodium ones that tended to be amber-ish. That part may be only imaginary, really. But I boosted saturation in this image just to see what happened:

view of noght sky to north with perhaps faint auroral banding, with saturation doubled digitally
There certainly seems to be a little banding in there, and it’d be easy to put this down to faint clouds if a) they were the color of reflected city lights, b) it wasn’t past midnight and thus far from sunset or sunrise colors, and c) this wasn’t due north (go ahead, find Ursa Major slightly right of center.) So to the question of whether I had any luck, I’d say, Yessssss, with this tone that indicated more No but not a complete No. In other words, Big deal who cares?

Along those same lines, I will throw in here that, as of the previous post, we’re now running second in the number of images uploaded within a year, and with six weeks to go, first is within the realm of possibility. As for the actual number of posts within a year, that’s well out of reach – I’d have to do almost two posts every day from here on to beat 2021, so no, not aiming for that. But to add to the image count (and because I never posted this back when it was semi-topical,) I throw down this 61-second exposure of a die-hard Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis,) the one that can always be found on the dead Japanese maple unless it’s bitterly cold in the evening – this was taken strictly by moonlight, and in fact, super moonlight. You can tell, can’t you? Just like that ‘aurora’ up there…

61 second exposure of juvenile Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis sleeping in branch of dead Japanese maple, taken by moonlight

Tastebuds are anxious

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I don’t have to tell you that today is Harvest The First Of The Citrus From The Greenhouse Day, because I’m sure you’re already deeply involved in this yourself. We’ve been watching the lemons and the Key limes developing, wondering how many would be ready for the holiday – it wasn’t a huge haul, certainly not the bulk of what’s out there, but it’s a nice start.

The two Key lime (Citrus × aurantiifolia) trees are slowly turning, most of them not quite there yet:

Key limes Citrus × aurantiifolia developing on tree in greenhouse
I have to say, these trees have been trying to outdo themselves, and you can see here the new flower buds right alongside fruits that aren’t quite ripe yet – Key limes turn a bit yellowish when they’re ready, and pop free easily from the branch. We have dozens that are on their way.

The two lemon trees, however, are rather disparate, and don’t ask me for a species because they were unidentified when we got them and I haven’t been able to pin it down yet. [EDIT: They are likely Meyer lemons, Citrus × meyeri – seems to be a good match.] One spent the summer too close to the outside of the greenhouse when we had the heat wave, we think, and lost many of its leaves right when it should have been developing the fruit, so only one branch has lemons and they’re developing slowly.

The other, though…

cluster of lemons on single branch on tree in greenhouse
The other produced so many lemons that it cannot actually bear the weight of them and is drooping like a weeping willow – nonetheless, they’re all healthy-looking and just before peak ripeness. I was tugging, and most of them aren’t letting go easily, so we’ll let them develop a little longer yet.

large clusters of lemons on tree in greenhouse, with branches propped up on crates for support
Seriously, a few of the branches had to be supported on a plastic crate because we’re afraid they’ll simply rip off on their own. This one always seems to do this, and right after the harvest I intend to trim the branches shorter and hopefully get it to grow a bit thicker and heftier.

So right now, the lemon harvest was sparse, though we have no recipes yet picked out for them so no rush, really.

bowl of freshly picked lemons
The Key limes have a couple of different recipes waiting though, and probably more with a little poking around on the webbernets, so I set about prepping today’s harvest to have ready – they’re not enough for more than one recipe, if that, but we can freeze the juice and zest in preparation rather than having them dry out while we wait for enough to ripen.

collection of Key limes Citrus × aurantiifolia being zested
Key limes aren’t big at all, and I suspect the heatwave kept these a little smaller, but they’re otherwise fine, so I started off getting the zest from them all and producing hand cramps – have to suffer for your art, after all.

collection of zested Key limes Citrus × aurantiifolia now being juiced
Then the juicing, a bit easier. I’ve tried those specialty juice presses you find in housewares stores and I’m unimpressed – the old-fashioned juicers work best, and make it easier to snag out the seeds as you go (of which all of these trees produce in abundance, the lemons especially.)

harvest of Key lime Citrus × aurantiifolia zest and juice in ice cube tray for freezing
And then ready for the freezer. This little silicone tray has ‘cubes’ in roughly one teaspoon sizes, so easy enough to measure for a recipe. The zest is frozen with water so it won’t dry out in the freezer, though we’ll probably bag these one they’re solid anyway.

Now, what to do first: the standard Key lime pie, or a Key lime pound cake? Decisions, decisions…

Another night, another… what?

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

view of northern sky at night with no trace of auroral activity
This is just to let you know that not only is the Leonids meteor shower expected to peak tonight after midnight, but there’s a chance that the aurora borealis will make another appearance, and with a dark moon (actually, it doesn’t matter how bright it is, because it’s riding too close to the sun right now and thus wont be seen most of the night,) the conditions are halfway decent astronomically – all that remains is what local conditions are like.

The pic above is from two nights ago, the night after getting the barest hint of the aurora, and it shows not even that – just some very thin clouds right down near the horizon. I was out for about an hour and did several different exposures in several different directions, and got nothing very exciting at all. I did make another attempt at star trails, though:

15-minute time exposure of night sky looking north proscribing arcs around Polaris
The exposure was set a bit better this time, but there’s still a lot of residual light in the sky, probably courtesy of the high humidity that we virtually always have here. Fifteen minute exposure, and not one Leonid elected to cross the frame. I mean, c’mon…

I tweaked the image afterward in GIMP for slightly better color and much better contrast, but yeah, it’s ‘shopped:

15-minute time exposure of night sky looking north proscribing arcs around Polaris, with contrast and color adjustments done digitally
Now, the very faint shadow at lower left is more visible, and this is likely my head. The deal was, I was on the side of a lonely road, but my framing was fairly low and so oncoming car headlights could actually illuminate the lens even when the road wasn’t in the frame. To fix this, I positioned myself between the camera and the single oncoming car so the camera remained in my shadow, but I think I got just a little too close.

[To do this, by the way, you have to face the camera and watch the shadow carefully, because as the car tracks past your shadow will pivot around and may expose the camera again, unless you compensate by shifting with it.]

Now, also while out there, some nearby canids decided to have an argument, and I quickly started recording video just to capture the audio, though this is only with the on-camera mic:

Serenade at night

You’ll notice that everything is in the same general pitch, so unless there’s a puppy mill someplace out there (which I certainly won’t rule out in rural North Carolina,) I’d say I caught a dispute among a pack or two of coyotes (Canis latrans.) You can go here and listen to the second track around the 30 second mark to compare, but it’s damn close at least.

Anyway, feel free to try your luck with both the aurora and the Leonids – I’ll likely be out there for at least a little while. One of these days…

Estate Find XLVI.V

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This one had been in the lineup for this week’s Estate Find until the beaver bumped it, but I still have the pics sitting here, so…

Looked out the back window the other day, around mid-afternoon, and noticed that we had a lurker out there.

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus sitting in bald cypress
This is a red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus,) almost certainly one of the ones that had been regularly hunting in the front yard much earlier this year – for convenience’s sake, I’m going to consider this one the female based on previous observations. She was sitting in roughly the middle of the yard, which gave here a good line of sight (and flight) down to the pond edge where the wood ducks congregate at feeding times. This was not either feeding time, sitting well between, and the wood ducks were nowhere to be seen, but it was still a suspicious perch.

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus perched in bald cypress unconcerned with photographer
I crept out carefully so as not to spook her before I got a few frames, but it was wasted effort, since she didn’t appear to have the faintest concern over my presence. It was bit of a chilly day, not really that bad, but she appears to be coping with the cold, which is interesting because I’ve seen the pair perched in the same general locale when the temperatures were well below freezing.

Perhaps a week earlier, I’d gone out through the garage and spooked her from the front lawn, where she flew to her typical perch on the streetlight at the end of the driveway, but that was how we knew the pair seemed to be returning to their old habits. Now we’re keeping an eye out, because while we fully understand the balance of nature thing and it’s not like there’s a scarcity of wood ducks, we’re still not keen on losing them to the hawks, especially not when we’re the ones coaxing them up onto the pond edge with corn.

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus perched casually in bald cypress
By the way, this is a typical habit of red-shouldered hawks: they tend to find perches well within the canopy of the trees and on a branch close to the main trunk, limiting their visibility and profile against the sky or background. Red-tailed hawks, on the other hand, usually perch out in the open, highly visible, but over areas where rodents are more likely to appear, which is why you see them along the mowed verges of highways.

After several frames, I sent this one on her way with a few sharp clacks of two wood blocks together – there’s plenty of other food sources in the area, and she’ll probably be hunting the anoles in the front yard in the mornings anyway.

Estate Find XLVI

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Another two part one this week – we’ll start off slow.

While I had been seeing some news alerts that the aurora borealis might be visible in several northern states, I paid little heed to them since North Carolina, despite its name, is far from being considered a ‘northern’ state. Then The Girlfriend’s Sprog told me that we might actually be seeing a display here, and I made it a point to get out to a dark sky location with a decent-ish view to the north – which is harder in this area than I imagined. I did numerous time exposures aimed north at various exposure settings, as well as some not aimed north, for the sake of it. And while chimping at the resulting exposures gave an indication that some light was there on the horizon, I wasn’t convinced that this was any evidence of the aurora itself.

time exposure of night sky to north with faint vestige of aurora borealis showing pink on the horizon
However, the following day I saw some photos from others at this same latitude that had a better view north and did indeed capture a nice pink glow, so it’s safe to say that this is what produced the light here. Certainly not a stunning (or even interesting) display, but evidence that it can be seen at extreme times all the way down here.

time exposure of night sky to the north showing faint vestige of aurora borealis as pink glow on horizon
I could easily have credited this to light pollution from nearby sources, though I’ve never seen it this hue and it was notably different from the glow in other directions. By naked eye, this color could not be made out at all, so not in any way a nice display.

But I did a 20-minute exposure for giggles, unfortunately with less-than-ideal settings that blew it out a bit, so I ended up tweaking the image in GIMP for a more fartistic version.

20-minute time exposure of night sky to north showing circular star trails and aurora colors on horizon
That was part one. Part two was captured last night down at the pond, when some uncommon noises attracted the attention of The Girlfriend and I.

The headlamp in tightly-focused spotlight mode is just barely adequate for video at short to moderate distances, provided I can keep it on the subject while also keeping the camera trained that way, which requires watching the LCD screen on the back which my personal focus range doesn’t want to permit easily – to be sure everything’s sharp, I usually end up using my inherent myopia and looking over top of my glasses at the screen, which naturally starts aiming the headlamp in the wrong direction. This is not a working solution.

The microphone, by the way, was the same Takstar SGC-598 used here, but damn it was picking up too much of the ambient noise – the cars weren’t half as close as they sound in the video. I should have gone with the Azden shotgun mic, but there wasn’t time to affix it to the video cage. The video light that I have (and did use for the latter clips when it decided to work again – don’t know why it balked initially) is an LED model with a broader view, ideal for macro work, but not focused for any distance. And yes, the video monitor seen at that link would help with focusing, but not with keeping the headlamp aimed correctly.

The beavers, meanwhile, were initially willing to ignore the bright lights and the occasional odd sounds coming from The Girlfriend and I, but eventually began to believe that this might not be kosher. It’s a shame that I wasn’t prepared for video right from the start, because on first finding one of them (which I believe might have been this year’s offspring,) I watched it stuff its head into a tangle of water reeds and plow around after something in there, venting a little grunt/whimper of frustration – this helped support the idea of it being young, since I’ve never heard the adults make any noise save for some teeth chattering as a warning if approached too close.

But, yeah, I have some improvements to make if I intend to pursue these kind of subjects with video. We’ll see how that goes…

You can always try

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

night time exposure view of Orion with plane passing through
This is just to give you adequate notice that the Leonids meteor shower is expected to peak the evening/morning of the 16th/17th, just a few nights away. While it is not forecast to be a significant one this time around, it has a tendency to be a decent display, so go for it.

Just to let you know, pictured is not Leo, but Orion, and not a meteor, but a plane of course. I have no worthwhile pics of a Leonid meteor, or indeed any, and not from being lazy. But we needed something here to capture your attention, and I just got this shot recently. Rest assured, if I get a decent image of a meteor, you will not only know about it, but I will be celebrating this long overdue event, a cake and a DJ and possibly a trained elephant. Don’t get me started…

You don’t say?

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collection of over sixteen Canada geese Branta canadensis on edge of backyard pond
Last Friday, we featured a video of the return of the Canada geese (Branta canadensis) to the pond after their curious disappearance months previously; the count was always either six or eight geese at any given time. A few days after that, I was looking out the bedroom window just after waking up in the morning to see nothing out there, until a flash of movement through the trees drew my attention, and a small flock of four or five came in to land further up by Turtle Island, some on the water and some actually on shore.

By the time I got downstairs, however, the numbers had increased significantly. Being blocked by various cypress trunks made it hard to be precise, but I dependably got at least fourteen. After feeding the cats, I took a bucket of corn down to the water’s edge – we won’t do this while the ducks are present because they’ll scatter and we’d rather not scare them off too often, but the geese are relatively complacent, just giving us a little distance. At that time, I got a count of nineteen, twice, which is a big jump in the number, literally overnight.

Obviously, the word was getting out that this was a safe place with food – but that got me to thinking, since no words were getting out at all. How, exactly, was this idea being communicated? And forgive me, because from this point on it’s only going to be idle and unedumacated speculation.

We’re oriented towards sound/speech/vocalization, so the first direction we tend to turn is thinking that the honks that the geese use from time to time are a method, and to be sure, there are subtle variations that can be found in the pitch and spacing and volume. I am reminded of our (human) neighbors in central New York, when one of their sons was now old enough to obtain his hunting license. They grew corn to feed their dairy cows, and the geese often used these fields after the harvest because it was a safe stopover and always had some leftover cobs available to snack upon. I could see the neighbor out there on the edge of the treeline, waiting for the geese to arrive, and when a flock was cruising in low, he gave forth with his goose call – only, he was imitating an alarm cadence, and the geese veered off and never landed. It’s not simply the sounds they make that matter.

So perhaps the geese now visiting our ponds have honked out the charms of their destination, but from experience, I can tell you that honking isn’t used that often at all, more often in flight and in gathering the flock together as one for takeoff. Since we’ve had at least two different groups visiting, this doesn’t seem to be a collective flock circumstance (especially when a flight can be as few as four or five geese or as many as several dozen, which could not be entertained on our little pond.) Moreover, for three days or more we had no more than eight, and then suddenly that number better than doubled. And to add to that, quite a few of them don’t fly in at all, but simply swim through the channel from The Bayou (which is much larger and even better protected, at least from a gooseley standpoint, because no one has access to the shoreline at all.)

Nonverbal cues are often far more prevalent in the animal kingdom, and indeed, we use them a lot more than we give credit for ourselves. We (perhaps just ‘I’) might ask what kind of behavior clues the others in? Is it that the initial group tended to leave some common meeting ground together to come up to our pond, or maybe how long they stayed away? Did they show little interest in food when they returned, suggesting that they’d been eating well while they were gone?

There’s a possibility that it’s a time of day thing, too – maybe geese have certain times that they seek food, and leaving for another spot at these times was indicative? Morning, of course, is prime feeding time for just about any diurnal animal, so suddenly heading out to another locale at that time perhaps says all that it needs to.

I’ve watched several movements that are repeated, from both the geese and the wood ducks, and they certainly seem to mean certain things though I have yet to hash out a decent ‘vocabulary,’ and of course I’m not able to see them at all when they’re about to leave The Bayou (or anyplace else) to come up to the main pond here. There may be some subtle communications of that nature, head bobs or shakes, flapping just before heading out, things like that. I’ve seen one goose always on lookout when anyone is feeding, same with the mallards, and this might be carried to the wood ducks too but they’re in such a frenzy when they finally do come up on shore and I’ve never seen one that’s committed to being the lookout, though often there’s one seeming to temporarily fulfill that duty. With the geese it’s more obvious, as are their warnings once we got too close; this really applied to the previous collection visiting, who were semi-habituated to us, while these are far more wary and maintain a certain distance out on the water when we’re nearby.

I have no conclusion to offer, just trying to hash out something that’s outside of our normal perspective, and offering perhaps a little insight into what any animal observer should try to pay attention to. Decent and definitive answers likely only come from dozens to hundreds of hours observing, and I’m certainly not at that level yet with any individual species (I tend to treat it as a buffet of many species and not concentrate on any one, which stretches things out a hell of a lot longer.) Naturally, anyone that has greater info is welcome to jump in and tell me where I’m all wet.

six Canada geese Branta canadensis cruising past in backyard pond

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