Last on the Card: the Four for the Price of One Edition

The sight of the area round the ponds in our village these days tends to make most of us who live here grumpy, and to sound like fully paid members of Reform UK, the anti-immigrant political party responsible for normalising racism.

It’s Greylag Geese, wherever you look. As you can see.

Each pair of devoted geese (and I have to hand it them, they’re excellent and solicitous parents) has a brood of about nine. They spend much of their time terrorising the other water birds, who have largely done a bunk: or alternatively crossing the main road that bisects the village. This brings cars, bin lorries, the local bus to a halt in both directions as each mother leads her brood slowly across the road, while father brings up the rear. One brood may follow another. Then another brood, from the opposite side may decide to return. I wasn’t quick enough on the draw with this shot. The action is almost over.

This photo was taken a couple of weeks ago. Astonishingly, only we were held up on this occasion.

It’s not just ducks and moorhens who are terrorised. We are not welcome either.

‘Hissssss’

They only discovered our ponds about three years ago. But every year, last year’s babies return to the place of their birth, and every year, the problem gets worse. Back home, as we clean from our shoes the excrement which the geese deposit in plentiful piles on the pavements, we can be heard to mutter: ‘B***** immigrants, terrorising our ducks and murdering our ducklings. Why can’t they just go back where they came from?‘

Well, that’s not a happy note to end on. So instead, glance back to the header shot. That’s truly the last shot on my camera for May: the sunset from our bedroom window.

For Brian’s Last on the Card.

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Author: margaret21

I'm retired and live in North Yorkshire, where I walk , write, volunteer and travel as often as I can.

41 thoughts on “Last on the Card: the Four for the Price of One Edition”

    1. It’s what the English used to say about American GIs in WWII ‘Overpaid, oversexed, and over here!’. Not sure about the ‘overpaid’ in the case of the geese but still …

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  3. Oh dear! Geese do make their feelings known, don’t they? Our problem is seagulls, also solicitous parents, also intimidating but at least they’re above us most of the time, although that has its own hazards.

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  8. Great pictures of your dreaded geese Margaret. We have the Canadian Geese here. They come to breed near our community pond and take it over. Yesterday, I had to pick up my dog while walking on a path. We also have coyotes to contend with, but they aren’t as nasty!

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  9. Oh dear – none of us (I hope!) wants to sound like a Reform member but they do seem to have taken over rather. The babies are cute though! And you can’t beat a beautiful sunset, whatever’s happening at ground level 🙂

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    1. The babies are cute, but you can’t believe how quickly they grow into gawky primary school kids, then sullen teenagers. All on a diet of grass! Hooray for the sunset, eh?

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  11. I am outside at the summer office watching the birds and entering data from my hummingbird feeder and thinking of your bird problem. It makes me wonder about how these species end up where they do – the Greylags in the England, the Canadian geese here in the US, and the parakeets in Portugal and many, many more. Interesting. I really think the most dangerous invasive species, might be us….

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    1. You’re not wrong, in your final sentence! But we have plenty of Canada geese too. And parakeets abound in southern England. The racket they make outside my son’s house in London! And my daughter’s house in Spain!

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    1. Ha! Ages. We have goslings who are all but fully grown, and sweet little bundles of fluff who are hardly hatched. Though they get from the latter to the former quite incredibly quickly. On grass, apparently.

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  14. Great photos, though I do agree about the sheer number of them. No geese here, except ones that fly over and sometimes visit the dew pond, but the Hayle estuary has a large number of Canada geese over the winter. My issue is with noisy rooks and seagulls that splatter my Velux windows. Especially annoying when they have just been cleaned!

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  17. This gave me a good laugh! Your description of the geese as the village’s newest “immigrants” was both humorous and painfully relatable. They may be devoted parents, but they certainly seem determined to take over the neighborhood. The hissing photo perfectly captures their attitude. Thankfully, that beautiful sunset provides a much calmer ending to the story, and a lovely final shot for the month.

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