Today just after sitting down for lunch in Arnie's by the Edmonds fishing pier, hubby & I noticed a pair of Canada Geese with 2 little goslings, on the beach. From the beginning of our watching, a crow had been shadowing the family, persistently trying to position itself, such that it was obvious to us what was on its mind. And to the geese, also, as they made a few neck-down runs at the crow -- but never followed through to chasing it entirely away. Don't know if they just were not sterling examples of the gene pool or inexperienced, but they did not do a good job of keeping themselves between the goslings and the crow. The adults wanted to go up off the beach using the 4 deep steps (next to the entry to the fishing pier) to get to the lawn at the top, but of course the goslings were way too small to manage it.

The crow had assessed the situation and went down to the beach, so the goslings were between it and the adults and the stairs. The adults turned their backs one too many times in their focus to go up off the beach, and quick as could be, the crow saw an opportunity and dashed in, grabbed one of the goslings, and flew away with it. The geese reacted with too little, too late. Prior to the snatching, I had told my husband there was probably a reason they only had 2 goslings. Now they only had one. And then the adults continued to go up the stairs, leaving the little one to try its hardest to do the impossible and follow them. Finally the adults "got a clue" and went back down to the gosling. The last we saw of the diminished family, they were paddling away out towards the end of the pier. Nature working itself out. Of course we felt bad for the little gosling, but as my husband pointed out, neither is an endangered species, and each has to do what it has to do, to survive. Some just do it better than others. That the crow was able to fly fairly well with the gosling in its beak, considering the ratio of their sizes to each other, was a bit surprising to me -- I would more have expected one of the larger gulls to pull off such a maneuver.
Dee Warnock
beachdee at hotmail.com
Edmonds