There's a new Goose in Town

Came back from New Zealand to find a new pair of geese showed up at the park's lake. While I believe they mate for life, they look like 2 males in size. One isn't smaller than the other, which would be the obvious way to spot the female. If the slightly smaller one is the female, she has something I've not seen before -- a traffic-cone-orange beak. The other has a black beak with the horn-like protrusion, just like Mr. Goose (refer to previous posts). He eats very gently from my hand but the orange beak is grabby.

It makes me have great fondness for the gentle one, because he's quite big, and they are both wild. Having flown over our pond and stopping for what I imagine was a few night's stay, they quickly learned there are lots of people who bring food, and that they are the biggest of the competing mouths. Watching the 4 geese we have in action amid the muscavoys, black bellied whistlers, wood ducks, those white Afflack kind of ducks, coots and nutrias, I understand where the phrase "pecking order" comes from.

No fear of their bite when it comes to me. Besides that I am the "biggest" of them all, they have no teeth, just little ridges about half way back on either side of their bills... looks very much like the teeth in a hair comb, Barbie sized. When they open up I can see a slim, long, rather human looking pink tongue, so at the very worst it feels like a weak clothespin shutting if they grab your finger when you're handing out bits of bread.

What amazes me is that wild ducks in New Zealand also ate from my hand (though the Pokekos (behind them) didn't. This is a morning feeding from our camper van), and these wild geese greet me and take from my hand too. How is that possible that they seem so tame? They see me coming, start to honk and lumber quite deliberately toward me with their big, rubbery feet slapping the ground and their fluffy white butts wiggling, which amuses me to no end. I have to admit, I feel quite amazed and lucky to have this kind of interaction with them.