I also remember back in 1993, returning home from school to my parents' home on L. Ontario, and being surrounded in their backyard by close to a hundred hungry and pushy goslings...feeding them while their parents looked on...it was a thrill.(Yep, grass was greener after)...We never see ducklings or goslings here these days. It used to be this time of year was great to watch the little families swimming around...now, its a lot like Rachel Carson's prediction. A silent spring.
What to do? The winter visitors -- buffleheads, mergansers and grebes have all gone. Goslings and Ducklings add spark to an otherwise bleary naturscape of adult geese, gulls, ducks and the scourge of the water bird world, the double crested cormorant.
Around the GTA, the Canada Goose has come to be as exotic as the Rock Dove or the European Starling but if you head into northern Ontario, they retain their regal image. One of my favourite Batemen prints is of a pair of nesting Canada Gees, not in a mall parking lot or inner city park but in a wetland in northern Ontario, with the early morning fog lifting off the water.
I miss the goslings and ducklings. Give me greener than natural green grass. Just give me the goslings and ducklings.
