Geese and goslings in a crèche?

[Puffling]

Spring is a season of renewal, new life and hope. It's also a somewhat sad time as some fall by the way.  Today I picked up a dead blue tit fledgeling in Mercia Marina. Earlier, I'd recorded a pair of mallards swimming with five ducklings, when the day before I had counted them with seven. Heavy predation (heron, crow, fox?), probably.

 

I was about to conclude the same when cruising past a pair of Canada geese sitting near a hedge in a field: at first glance all I noticed was a single gosling with them. As I looked back, I saw more youngsters, initially concealed by the hedge. I think there were fifteen fluffy goslings altogether. Impossible for such a brood to be one pair's, wouldn't you think?

 

In the end I decided the brood I saw was in fact a crèche, comprising another pair's (or even more) nestlings. Wikipedia seems to confirm that the geese do care for the offspring of other parents while the latter are away feeding. On the end, an uplifting sight.

[Arthur Marshall]

I was at Westport lake in Stoke when the goslings were new, and dozens of them were being herded up and down the grass with various geese standing lookout round them, following behind or leading the way. They didn't seem to be worried about whose egg they'd come out of.

Terribly "woke", geese. Keep you awake,  too.

[Tony Brooks]

1 hour ago, Puffling said:

Impossible for such a brood to be one pair's, wouldn't you think?

I understand Canada Geese do put the goslings into a crèche where other adults look after  several broods.

[AndrewIC]

4 hours ago, Puffling said:

Today I picked up a dead blue tit fledgeling in Mercia Marina. Earlier, I'd recorded a pair of mallards swimming with five ducklings, when the day before I had counted them with seven.

It’s sad, but if they all survived we’d be knee deep in blue tits by now. The great tits have occupied one end of our “sparrow terrace” (it’s had great tits, blue tits and bumble bee nests over the years, but never any sparrows), and the house martins arrived back a few days ago and are busy making a mess of next door’s walls.

Edited May 15, 2022 by AndrewIC

[Puffling]

9 hours ago, AndrewIC said:

It’s sad, but if they all survived we’d be knee deep in blue tits by now.

You're completely right there, of course. In the early days, the parent birds selflessly devote their entire waking energies to catching food for the chicks and feeding them. Yet only a proportion will survive.  We have to assume there's only some residual regret when they notice a chick missing from the nest or a duckling snatched from the water by a heron, not anything we might understand as mourning their loss. Birds, I know, are not very good at counting.

 

Also important is the role that high infant mortality plays in natural selection. In a fast-changing environment, a youngster showing a slightly advantageous mutation has a better chance of survival than its peers. In many wealthy countries, humans have bypassed the selection process which for millions of years shaped our hominid offshoot. A human infant born in these places stands a good chance of making it through to adulthood, mostly irrespective of which genetic disadvantages they carry.

 

The film The Age Of Stupid suggested that we have ignored the crises facing us because we  care little about the future of our living planet. Did something in that missing natural selection breed such concern out of our modern brains?

[MtB]

41 minutes ago, Puffling said:

The film The Age Of Stupid suggested that we have ignored the crises facing us because we  care little about the future of our living planet. Did something in that missing natural selection breed such concern out of our modern brains?

 

 

I think we can blame modern medicine for that. Human evolution in at least the western civilised world has broadly been brought to a halt by medicinal advances and to a lesser extent, our welfare and benefits system. Everyone survives now, not just the fittest, overriding natural selection.

 

 

[David Mack]

2 hours ago, MtB said:

Everyone survives now, not just the fittest, overriding natural selection.

 

 

So what humanity needs is some new disease, which we have no cure for, no preventative treatment, and little knowledge of how it spreads, to kill off all the weak and vulnerable amongst us...

[Ronaldo47]

I understand tfat pike will also take ducklings. 

[Puffling]

7 minutes ago, Ronaldo47 said:

I understand tfat pike will also take ducklings. 

Interesting. Never considered they might be at threat from below the water.

[Hudds Lad]

Pike, Zander, Catfish and lets not forget the Terrapins we see now and then

[Ronaldo47]

I heard it on a radio programme some years ago where a naturalist was talking about things he had seen on waterways and lakes. The pike had started at the end and picked them off one by one. 

[Cheshire cat]

I remember a real commotion at Fradley junction some years back. All the ducks jumped on to the bank. They had spotted whatever it was that was hunting them.

[cuthound]

3 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:

I understand tfat pike will also take ducklings. 

 

Yes they do. Living next to the cut I have on several occasions I have witnessed a duckling suddenly disappear under the water, presumably because a pike has taken it. 

[Athy]

5 hours ago, David Mack said:

So what humanity needs is some new disease, which we have no cure for, no preventative treatment, and little knowledge of how it spreads, to kill off all the weak and vulnerable amongst us...

Not much more than a couple of years ago, it looked as if the Corona Virus might do just that. Without the incredible achievement of (*mainly British, I think) scientists in developing effective vaccines, it might still have been doing so.

I don't think we want another one just yet awhile, do we?

[Puffling]

1 hour ago, cuthound said:

 

Yes they do. Living next to the cut I have on several occasions I have witnessed a duckling suddenly disappear under the water, presumably because a pike has taken it. 

Monkeys have a different alarm call to warn the rest of the troop about dangerous predators being spotted. One call means "danger in the air", another indicates "danger from below".  I wonder if the quacks of ducks might one day be decoded and be shown to be carrying similarly nuanced information?

 

[tree monkey]

30 minutes ago, Puffling said:

Monkeys have a different alarm call to warn the rest of the troop about dangerous predators being spotted. One call means "danger in the air", another indicates "danger from below".  I wonder if the quacks of ducks might one day be decoded and be shown to be carrying similarly nuanced information?

 

Nowadays we just use an app.

[BWM]

4 hours ago, cuthound said:

 

Yes they do. Living next to the cut I have on several occasions I have witnessed a duckling suddenly disappear under the water, presumably because a pike has taken it. 

Pike, and occasionally catfish will take ducklings but the most damaging predators in recent times where we are based are otters. They have also taken fairly large cygnets too.

[Jim Riley]

23 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:

I understand t'fat pike will also take ducklings. 

You've missed an apostrophe if you're talking northern.😉

Anyway what's all this fuss over a few goslings taken by pike, it might have been a small child in the water, something must be done. 

Edited May 17, 2022 by Jim Riley

[Athy]

No one has yet mentioned mink, which were cited as leading predators some years ago. Are they in decline?

[Jim Riley]

4 minutes ago, Athy said:

No one has yet mentioned mink, which were cited as leading predators some years ago. Are they in decline?

A few years back I found duckling feathers and stinky mink poo in a back locker on my Dawncraft, it had got in through the hole for the steering cable. 

Edited May 17, 2022 by Jim Riley

[tree monkey]

12 minutes ago, Athy said:

No one has yet mentioned mink, which were cited as leading predators some years ago. Are they in decline?

Otters numbers are on the rise, this tends to push the mink out, so although I don't actually know any figures I suspect so

[Hudds Lad]

Basically anything that predates other species will have ducklings, they're an easy mark. So you can include Magpies, Crows, Cats (domestic and feral), Rats, Mink, Weasels, Stoats, Foxes, Chupacabras, Otters, Dogs & Luis Suarez.

[Jen-in-Wellies]

On 17/05/2022 at 10:38, Athy said:

No one has yet mentioned mink, which were cited as leading predators some years ago. Are they in decline?

They've all been killed by pike. One of the few fish that will wear fur coats.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Jen-in-Wellies

[Jen-in-Wellies]

On 15/05/2022 at 16:49, Puffling said:

Spring is a season of renewal, new life and hope. It's also a somewhat sad time as some fall by the way.  Today I picked up a dead blue tit fledgeling in Mercia Marina. Earlier, I'd recorded a pair of mallards swimming with five ducklings, when the day before I had counted them with seven. Heavy predation (heron, crow, fox?), probably.

 

I was about to conclude the same when cruising past a pair of Canada geese sitting near a hedge in a field: at first glance all I noticed was a single gosling with them. As I looked back, I saw more youngsters, initially concealed by the hedge. I think there were fifteen fluffy goslings altogether. Impossible for such a brood to be one pair's, wouldn't you think?

 

In the end I decided the brood I saw was in fact a crèche, comprising another pair's (or even more) nestlings. Wikipedia seems to confirm that the geese do care for the offspring of other parents while the latter are away feeding. On the end, an uplifting sight.

Geese do seem to be able to do cooporation well. Their standard way of grazing in a group is that some will stand guard on the look out for predators, while the rest munch, then after a while, some other geese will take over guard, while the old guards start eating. Going from there to operating a crèche isn't such a big step.

[ditchcrawler]

2 hours ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

They've all been killed by pike. One of the few fish that will wear fur coats.

Talking of pike, I think they must be the most common dead fish I see floating in the cut, saw quite a few compared to other breads last time we were out.