Goslings and family relations on Wild Sunday May 25, 2008

[W]hile walking the dog, I noticed 2 new Canada goose families on a small pond in the park behind my house. Each pair of adults had 3 very small babies. [The following morning] I noticed one pair had 5 babies and the other, one. [Two days later] all 6 babies were with one pair of the adults (3 other adult pairs were present, all without broods). This pond is relatively isolated so I am sure that the families are not moving between different ponds. I have never heard of this reshuffling of broods before. Is this common?

I have often seen expanding groups of goslings with a pair of geese after initial leaving of the nest. In some cases it seems like there is baby-sitting while parents are gone, but more often, the goslings seem to be abandoned by their parents and adopted by another pair. This doesn’t seem well understood, but I could guess from an evolution perspective that the parents that abandon their goslings have a better chance of surviving themselves and the adoptive parents real goslings have a better chance of survival in a larger flock of goslings. Maybe first time parents abandon their goslings to older experienced parents – just a guess. A great book about goose behavior is The Geese of Beaver Bog by Bernd Heinrich.

I have heard of reshuffling like this. Even though they are `sure’ that other broods are not walking in it is very difficult to count that out because they will travel a lot with those broods. I believe the literature says up to 5 miles.

This morning a new brood on the pond with 4 very small goslings. At the other end of the pond, last week’s group now has 7 babies with one noticeably smaller than the rest. Looks like we have a serial gosling-napping pair. I’m wondering if it is because the pond is small and the families are too close together.