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Wow, wonderful story and even better pictures. Thank you!
e6filmuser wrote:
Geese, actually. I was misinformed.
I had heard quite a lot of loud honking from the next door garden earlier that day and a bit the previous day. I was not totally surprised. There is a lake within half a mile with dozens of geese. Maybe a couple of ganders had taken a territorial dispute inland. I took no great interest.
A bit later, my neighbour phoned me. She asked me to take my camera to photograph ducks and ducklings on her swimming pool. I did so, only to find what looked suspiciously like three goslings in the middle of the pool, the parents having moveg away. The water level was down quite a bit and it was clear to me that the birds were too small to climb out and their wings were still stubby and undeveloped.
I took a few photos and then I went to find some kind of net to scoop them out. On the way, I did a short detour to look over our fence into the adjacent farm lane. Instead of the duck I might have seen there was a Canada Goose, looking like she had lost something.
I returned with an apple picker net on a long, extending pole. It took a few minutes to catch all three, their diving and underwater swimming being impressive. I placed them in a cat cage and squeezed through a hole in the fence and walked down the lane. At the bottom of the lane was a large farmhouse behind an extensive lawn with a number of Canada Geese grazing.
The goose closest to me took quite an interest in my approach. I then tipped the babies out of the change and they all ran, their wings wobbling ineffectively towards here. The family was reunited.
The following day, there was that honking again from the direction of the pool. A glance through our hedge found the parent birds and young all swimming once more. I returned to it with my camera, some bread and a scaffolding plank.
The mother goose was on the water but the father was in the next garden making a noisy fuss. I sloped the plank between the “shore” and the shallow end of the pool and proceeded to distribute bread and take pictures.
Fairly soon, the escape route was put to effect and the mother, with quite a bit to say to me, led the brood towards the farmhouse, father joining them. (The image of the whole family is not very good but it completes the story.
The images from the first day were blurred but not those form the second session.
I later saw photos of Mallard Ducks and ducklings in the next garden away from us a few days earlier.
The moral of the story is to ensure that vertebrates can escape from ponds and pools.
Olympus EM-1, Olympus 4/3 50mm f2 at f9 or f7.5, hand-held.
Harold
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