Friday 23 October 2015

More About Angel

You dedicated readers of this blog--a bright blue good morning to you, Uncle Pete and Aunt Moss--have asked for more about Angel, the Spanish Canada Goose who lives, as I do, at Fool's Paradise in Toronto. 
At first, we were all minding our business. I gave myself an update on part of the bluff.











Angel took the sun but left plenty for the rest of us. (Angel, by the way, could see his breath earlier this morning. He showed also that he can use the tips of his webbed foot to scratch his chin exactly as, and just as fast, a dog can.)









Then things got hairy, feathery, for Angel and his mates. Bad enough that I strolled through, but they're used to that.








A more profound danger came onto the scene.









The hawk (sorry, I'm guessing) is barely evident in the photo above, but all too clear to the geese, though in this case they seem pretty mellow about it. Other times, as I've already noted, Angel and company scatter when a winged predator swings overhead. Not scatter, quite. More an instant and severe rush for cover--the pond will do. This morning, a greater menace was at hand.








But even this fellow--whom I'm calling, after Dan Tysdal's new book, Faux--seemed in a mellow mood.








Angel and company, however, reacted in a way I'd not seen before. 









Faux is just off camera to the right. I'm not sure if he'd go after a full-grown goose even if he wasn't satisfied with just sun for the moment. But that many geese so close together, and just standing there--I'm guessing all they could do was band together in case of attack.

Faux took off. Angel is preening. I'm about to do the same.

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