{"id":38311,"date":"2025-02-14T05:42:26","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T10:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=38311"},"modified":"2025-02-14T01:42:37","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T06:42:37","slug":"estate-find-vii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2025\/02\/estate-find-vii\/","title":{"rendered":"Estate Find VII"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/SpyGoose.jpg\" alt=\"Canada goose Branta canadensis looking alertly from pond edge with turtle in background\" width=\"750\" height=\"769\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-38312\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>Nothing exciting this week &#8211; with the exception of what&#8217;s already been posted, it&#8217;s been slow here, with a lot of rain, and believe me, I don&#8217;t consider Canada geese (<em>Branta canadensis<\/em>) anything remarkable. That said, as they started moving from the lower pond to the main pond right out back, we decided to see if we could habituate them a little better to our presence, which worked &#8211; well, you can see for yourself.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1056660875?badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" title=\"Habituating some geese\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The Girlfriend did the video this time, from the back deck, while I did the Jim Fowler thing and tried to get my ass kicked, but the geese were quite well-behaved. A lot of people seem to feel they&#8217;re wickedly territorial as a species, but I suspect that&#8217;s only in areas where they&#8217;re constantly being harassed &#8211; I&#8217;ve never seen it myself, and at the pond near the previous Walkabout Estates, they were <a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2021\/05\/awkward-teen-years\/\" target=\"_blank\">quite congenial<\/a>, especially when food was involved.<\/p>\n<p>Notice, in the video, that I spend a fair amount of time looking away casually, and this is on purpose &#8211; staring is predator behavior. You might be amazed how well this simple technique causes wildlife to drop its guard a little more &#8211; though I&#8217;m not entirely sure that these guys weren&#8217;t already habituated to people to some extent, because they certainly seemed to recognize the corn from the moment I started tossing it out. In the few days since this video was shot, another pair has started coming by, a little shyer than these, but still coming up for food from both of us now, and it&#8217;s beginning to become a regular occurrence. Not only that, but the wood ducks have started coming onshore now, a distinct improvement, though whether this is due to finding the corn, seeing the geese doing it, or simply because they&#8217;re entering mating season and thus less wary (well, concentrating harder on <em>other<\/em> things,) I can&#8217;t say for sure.<\/p>\n<p>We have a small addition, from just yesterday, only it&#8217;s not from Walkabout Estates but a few kilometers away.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/SemiDomestic.jpg\" alt=\"pair of geese found at nearby channel, possibly a Roman goose and Canada goose hybrid\" width=\"750\" height=\"499\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-38314\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>Initially, I thought these were snow geese in winter and spring plumage, since I&#8217;d never seen the species before, but upon looking those up, I found this was not the case<strong>;<\/strong> not only that, but they didn&#8217;t seem to be <em>any<\/em> of the goose species that can be found in North America. Wild, that is, because eventually I determined that these are most likely a domestic <a href=\"https:\/\/learnpoultry.com\/domestic-geese-breeds\/\" target=\"_blank\">Roman goose<\/a> (white, on the right) and a <a href=\"https:\/\/ebird.org\/species\/x00759\" target=\"_blank\">hybrid<\/a> with a Canada goose (darker one &#8211; notice the Canada&#8217;s distinctive white face stripe showing up.) There were several of each there, as well as several Canadas, more than a handful of mallards, and one Muscovy, another domestic breed. Discarded or escaped? Who knows, but it happens often enough either way. So, no real wildlife capture, but cool-looking all the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nothing exciting this week &#8211; with the exception of what&#8217;s already been posted, it&#8217;s been slow here, with a lot of rain, and believe me, I don&#8217;t consider Canada geese (Branta canadensis) anything remarkable. That said, as they started moving from the lower pond to the main pond right out back, we decided to see [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,3809],"tags":[2796,2795,7977,7975,7974,7861,7973,7976],"class_list":["post-38311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","category-video","tag-branta-canadensis","tag-canada-goose","tag-canada-goose-hybrid","tag-close-approaches","tag-conditioning","tag-feeding","tag-habituating","tag-roman-goose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}