Our little lake is a year-round home to a good number of Canadian Geese. In late March, we discovered that a pair had established a nest just outside our back door, next to our patio.
The nest was rarely left unattended. They did not like anyone coming too close, including us, but they eventually learned to tolerate the people who lived behind the glass door (as long as we stayed behind that door). Below, the watchful parents.
One night, Mike heard a disturbance. Something had caused both parents to squawk, issuing a warning to whomever had approached.
Mama had left the eggs uncovered, and Mike took this picture - it was the only time we saw the eggs. A few days later one of the eggs appeared on the lawn, apparently discarded.
Then on Wednesday morning, April 17, six goslings appeared. That same morning, they all went for their first swim to the other side of the lake and back. They returned to our side but never came back to the nest, moving on instead to a new, less exposed home which we never found. The two pictures and the video below were all taken on April 17.
This one-minute video shows five of the newborns getting their feet wet shortly after they had hatched. Mama had stayed behind with the sixth gosling who had not yet left the nest - he is visible toward the end of the video. He eventually joined the family, and all six can be seen in the photo above.
The two photos below were taken in early May. We'd seen several families of geese with between one and five little goslings, and we could not tell which, if any, was "our" family. Possibly they are somewhere in these photos.
Near the end of May, I took this picture looking down from our living room window. The goslings are growing!
While they can swim and dive from Day 1, goslings don't usually learn to fly until they are 2-3 months old.
Then in June, there was an armada of geese on our little lake, and it was difficult to distinguish the new arrivals from their parents.