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Geese and goslings in a lock, heartless boater


Leemc

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Reminds me of a sign on the Leicester arm of the GU explaining that boaters should avoid letting swans pass through the locks as a couple of locks up there was a different family and they're territorial.

 

Anyway, as they studiously ignored my attempts to coax or scare them out the lock it occurred to me that swans, unlike boats, don't need to use locks to travel from one part of the system to the other :D

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2 minutes ago, Ianws said:

Some of the language on here is pretty grim. Please don't use words you wouldn't think ok in conversation with your mother, wife, partner, daughter, granddaughter.

In case we upset their delicate female ears and send their little brains into a tizz and a fit of the vapours?

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5 minutes ago, Ianws said:

Some of the language on here is pretty grim. Please don't use words you wouldn't think ok in conversation with your mother, wife, partner, daughter, granddaughter.

To be clear

I'm specifically talking about the use of the word twat.  

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2 hours ago, Jerra said:

Very probably all correct however that is no reason for potentially crushing an adult or mincing a gosling or two.

 

Did the boat actually crush the geese? If not I'm unclear what all the fuss is about. I've taken my boat into several locks with geese, ducks and swans. They usually get out of the way.

Edited by blackrose
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1 hour ago, MtB said:

Summary:

 

"Boat enters lock and geese and goslings avoid the boat. Observer very upset even though nothing happened, and posts angrily on discussion forum."

 

This strikes me as similar to 20 tonne lumbering narrowboat skippers panicking they are going to hit a fast and nimble canoe. The canoeists are totally confident the NB could never hit or squash them even if they tried. 

 

Agreed. This thread is more about "animal lovers" who don't seem to understand animal behaviour than an incident of cruelty to animals.

Edited by blackrose
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11 minutes ago, blackrose said:

 

Did the boat actually crush the geese? If not I'm unclear what all the fuss is about. I've taken my boat into several locks with geese, ducks and swans. They usually get out of the way.

It would appear it is more by good luck than good management.   I too have shared locks with waterfowl but I take care and don't just charge in willy nilly.  The "fuss" IMO is about the attitude of "to hell with other living things, I will do as I want".

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I went in to one of the locks on the Stourbridge flight a few weeks ago, as I went to open a top paddle I saw some ducks in the lock in front of the boat.  The adult ducks flew out leaving the ducklings behind.  The ducklings then swam down the gap between the boat and the lock wall so I filled the lock and boated out.  Once out we left the top gate open so they could swim out.

 

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Several years ago on the Thames a friend of mine standing on the bow of my boat started shouting at me and waving his arms around madly. I couldn't make out what he was saying over the noise of the engine so I just carried on. Turns out he was worried about me running over a pair of swans directly ahead of the boat. He didn't seem to realise they would just get out of the way at the last minute. 

 

I understand that it's slightly different in a lock, but in my experience the same thing happens. I just take my boat in slowly and over the last 25 years I haven't killed any waterfowl yet, so I think some people are overreacting.

3 minutes ago, Jerra said:

It would appear it is more by good luck than good management.   I too have shared locks with waterfowl but I take care and don't just charge in willy nilly.  The "fuss" IMO is about the attitude of "to hell with other living things, I will do as I want".

 

Good luck or the natural ability of the geese to get out of the way? Anyway, we only have the OP's account of how fast the boat went into the lock. And as we all know, the perception of the speed of boats is subjective.

Edited by blackrose
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Just now, blackrose said:

Several years ago on the Thames a friend of mine standing on the bow of my boat started shouting at me and waving his arms around madly. I couldn't make out what he was saying over the noise of the engine so I just carried on. Turns out he was worried about me running over a pair of swans directly ahead of the boat. He didn't seem to realise they would just get out of the way at the last minute. 

 

I understand that it's slightly different in a lock, but in my experience the same thing happens. I just take my boat in slowly and over the last 25 years I haven't killed any waterfowl yet, so I think some people are overreacting.

That is the crux of the matter.   You take your boat in slowly, the write up in the original post makes it clear that wasn't the case in this event.

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Accidents happen.  I shared a broad lock breasted up once and failed to notice a family of young ducks going in with me. Not little ducklings,  more like juveniles. 

With me on the tiller and the other skipper on the paddles we were up and out quickly,  only then as I left the lock did I see the crushed, lifeless corpses of 2 young ducks spinning around in my wake.

Quack Quack ooops..

They do make good fenders though. 

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The geese would have been difficult to shoo out from an empty deep lock like the Marple ones with food. The times they are open is very short presently so I can understand why the boat went in especially if as seems likely these are very common (almost too common) Canada Geese. How long was the  boat? If it was nearing the lock I can’t see the geese would have swam out even if you dangled a pole down between the upper gates and the geese TBH. 
 

It’s amazing the adult/s managed to swim to the back of the boat, can’t understand how that actually happened as it’s so tight in locks, or was it just the goslings that did that?  

 

Glad all was OK, perhaps the boater was right to have entered the lock after all? 

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