The Canada Goose is being proposed for our official bird. They have to be the most destructive bird we have. They literally chew up every blade of grass in the parks hour after hour while simultaneously squirting it back out the other end! However they are one of the most amusing and beautiful birds we have. They come in droves to Deer Lake every summer. It is nesting season and all the little goslings are following mom all day long.
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Canada geese are pretty well represented here in Britain too. I doubt whether you will find a river or lake or even decent-sized pond which doesn't have its population of these pretty birds. I found a pair in the City Basin the other day, happily grazing on the lawn of a housing development.
ReplyDeleteIn parks they are easy to photograph because they soon become used to people feeding them. In York a few weeks ago, I saw the traffic halted as a group of them crossed the road from a public garden to a park.
They could be North Carolina's state bird. We have them everywhere. In the springtime, you'll frequently find an entire freeway temporarily closed down while a family of them teeter across the road. One time a particular family of them had a baby with either an injury or a birth defect making it difficult to walk. A lady called in to the local radio station telling all the listeners which corner the family walked across and to be conscious of the baby with the limp. We take our geese seriously down here, it seems!
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in Virginia, it was turtles. There were signs all over the roads to slow down and avoid squashing the turtles (how do you do that on a freeway going 80mph??).