first birthday - feeding the geese

Sorry about the size - no img editing stuff here. :)

He is SO CUTE!!!!
:cry:
I miss my baby boy being that young (i'm silly; he's only 2 1/2...)

:) Chris is just adorable.

Happy birthday, little guy! :party: :bounce: :hi:

future Democrat you've got there, John. I predict he'll break a few hearts in his day.

And you're no slouch yerself.

:D :hi:

the last pic is amazing. There's something in his eyes, pentrating...intelligence beyond his yrs. A beautiful family. thanks for posting! :hug:

That was at three weeks old. He was "on" from the get-go. :D

:hi:

That doesn't look like you in the pics. Is it?

Got my hair cut Saturday. :)

Happy birthday to the little one!

They become a nuisance and a health hazard.

they fall under different rules and can be captured and destroyed.

Traffic stops to let them cross. I hear what you're saying, but these are already established permanent residents of the area. They feed on the lawns and stay near the urban ponds.

They're part of a whole fleet of waterfowl on that pond. They've been there for a long time - a lot of ducks and several ill-tempered swans as well.

They are already permanent residents.

And mostly, they love (to eat) the lawns next to water sources.

the laws have been changed so that if they become "permanent residents" they are no longer protected. Beautiful animals..and we helped them become a nuisance(sp?)

Hard to tell from the context of the picture, but I know it's possible to get waterfowl eggs at hatcheries these days, and breed mallard ducks, Canada geese, etc.

Edited to fix the post -- at first I thought this was referring to the original thread (where the geese in the pic look like domesticated farmyard type geese, possibly Pilgrims?). But I've also seen "wild" waterfowl types which were hatched in incubators. So the Canada goose in the subthread could be "tame" that way, too.

Though I agree -- it's generally better to let the wild ones fend for themselves (especially around migration time, so they decide not to hang around). And these days there's the additional worry, if the wild birds are coming into areas where people are keeping domestic ones, of avian flu transmission.

Or at least they were until they were tamed and ceased migrating due to people feeding them.

Apparently some subspecies (like the larger "maxima" type, which might be the one shown in that photo) were almost extinct due to overhunting, so extensive captive breeding and re-introduction projects were started in the late 20th century. It's possible that the birds mentioned by the poster, or at least their ancestors, originated from those projects. (Way back then, even most wildlife managers didn't see feeding as being a bad thing, and some fish/game organizations were known to set out food themselves because they wanted to encourage high populations for hunting.)

One wildlife biologist I know has suggested that some of the breeding stock may have been more habituated to humans and settled areas, and this made them more likely to associate people with food. It's not uncommon, in captive populations, for the less-friendly individuals to die off due to high stress levels, leaving ones which -- if not exactly semi-domesticated -- are more inclined that way than wild populations.

Of course, as you point out, attitudes have changed. And wildlife captive breeding projects, and wildlife rehabilitators, are told to reduce contact as much as possible so the birds and animals don't get used to people.

Actually they haven't for a while, but they used to try to for several years. It all started when my running friend and I threw snowballs at the geese early in the spring when I was in early high school. They went after us in retaliation. Everytime after that those geese would hiss at us and chase us. For some reason, geese everywhere became hostile towards me as well, even when visiting an area a 100 miles away. There were times that the geese were being calm around other people but went into attack mode the moment I showed up.
Finally in Wisconsin, the geese don't automatically try to attack me like they did in the past.

the little guy is BEAUTIFUL!

Hope you had a great time :hi:

I'm glad that he had a fun birthday.

Can't believe it's been a whole year! Happy Birthday little guy!

And, y'all look just as over the moon now as you did then. Happy Birthday!

He looks so wise... :hi:

Has anyone ever told you that you look like Kenneth Branagh?

What a cutie! :D :party:

Pisser of a time getting home today - they closed the Atlanta airport to incoming flights for like three hours, so we got to sit at Tulsa Int'l with an increasingly bored baby for frigging ever. And now, the workweek...

:loveya:

I can't believe it's been a year already.

:party: