Pond sitting

I don’t sit too much. But today I’m sitting with purpose. I’m geese-spying.

I’m sitting down at my pond waiting for two nesting geese to take a break so that I can candle their eggs and see if this is a viable endeavor for these ladies to continue.

My two female American geese, Lucy and Peaches, have been sitting on their eggs a few weeks. There’s one hidden behind the goose in front. They are quite new to this whole procreation thing, so it’s very possible they just don’t entirely know what they are doing yet. I certainly felt that way when I was waiting for Cerys to “hatch”.

Anyway, I consulted my expert friend Sonja, of Rustic Red Poultry (check her out on FB) and she suggested I just spend some time at the pond and wait for them to take a break. I’m supposed to quickly sneak over to the aforementioned nest, throw a puppy corral fence up around it and get busy candling the eggs to see what is happening. If it looks like we are in business, leave them there. If not remove the eggs and the nesting barrel and get the girls back to normal.

Hmm. Why the puppy corral?

“Well, because when they see you messing with their eggs they will come at you, full force, running, ready for blood.”

Oh Good Lord. How do I get back out?

“Throw the cage around them, or yourself even. If it’s around them, open the cage up and back away…”

Right. I’ll probably be running, screaming at the top of my lungs. There will be no Mission Impossible backing away slowly and slipping out with even regular heartbeats….

So. Here I am. Book in hand, everything peaceful. The calm before the storm….

So. I’ve been observing several things while I’ve been down here on my “essential” pond sit Please know, my pioneery build-a-fence type friends, I’m working on my taxes in the wind and I ran three miles and took care of my chickens and kids, (although thankfully they home school themselves), and I know what we’re having for dinner…

So. The pond sit begins. Here’s a some observations of different creatures besides geese.

1) Redwing Blackbirds. So, there’s several couples down here on nests and the males are extraordinarily fierce. I’ve witnessed them chasing ducks and the male goose (very brave) and even incredibly scary sparrows this morning.

2) Redwing male blackbirds are sometimes also unintentionally entertaining:

They would hate for you to know this, as they want to be taken extremely seriously, but I witnessed one landing on an extremely tall reed and then arcing back and forth on said reed in an extreme bunging-jumping manner for a good 30 seconds. I was stifling a laugh as I didn’t want to embarrass him.

Or possibly he’s having a middle-aged crisis and this is the equivalent of a red-sports car and too many years of boring fighting off predator sparrows from his wife’s nests…

BB the Gander evidently also got bored as he fell asleep.

Ok. So here’s the latest.

At 1pm (and referencing earlier protestors, be quiet, I’m now doing ‘biological research’ which is being taken ‘very seriously’ on social media currently I’ve noticed…) just one goose (Peaches) came out, so I dashed over as quietly as one can dash amongst trees and pulled out the single egg that Peaches was currently coveting with my hand while the other goose wasn’t looking. I just tried not to look in at my hand during this process, I just wanted to remember it as it once was before it was beaten and bruised.

I candled the egg. It looked just sort of full, (but not sure what with). Not clear, anyway.

Meanwhile Mr. Gander and Peaches were clearly discussing the best and cleanest ways to kill me. There is, after all, a pond here….

Please note that I am hiding behind a tree whilst taking this photo.

Meanwhile, however, Lucy is sitting on the majority of eggs and I’m definitely not reaching my tiny hand way back there again to get it beaten to death by a beak. I need my hands to make dinner.

Well that was that, for now. There was an exciting moment where a couple of ducks got close to the nest to partake of the extra food I’ve been giving the girls, and I didn’t get pictures of that, although it looked like an episode of ‘ Dr. Phil ‘.

I think that Lucy had already had her daily “me moment” earlier in the morning before I came out, which doesn’t bode well for candling the rest of the eggs. I’ll give it a few more days before I “just” kick them out and we start over. Sonja tells me there is mourning on the spot, and I’m already losing sleep over that, even though I haven’t been to bed yet.

But it’s gone calm again, according to Dad.

To quote my friend Sonja, “it is quite dramatic, geese live lives of drama…”

I have no doubt I’ll experience this…

At this point in the day at the other end of the Rabbit Hole, I’d have been having a nice pub lunch.

Well, maybe a year ago I would have….curbside pub pickup doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.