… aka, “Our 2021 Lake Family, Part 2”.
Today’s post features our new lake family, on the “big day”! After egg incubation, both parents and the 6 little goslings were ready to leave the nest and explore their new world … however, one problem to overcome … the nest was pretty low in the flower pot and the goslings worked and worked to jump over the pot’s lip, but it was such a distance, they had lots of problems!
To help coax the young ones out of the nest, mom hopped back into the pot, sat with the youngsters for a few minutes, then left the pot … expecting them to follow her. But again, the little goslings worked hard to get out of the pot, but just couldn’t. So mom hopped into the nest once again.
This time, one of the goslings managed to climb on momma’s back, where it was content to just sit and keep warm:
But mom had other plans. When the little gosling didn’t show any signs of wanting to leave the nest, mom stood up …
… and began to “wing flap” (like they do after bathing). Can you spot the little gosling?
If not, here is another copy of the above image, with the little gosling circled in red:
“Pop”! Out falls the gosling:
And beginning a free-fall to his new, aquatic world:
“Over the edge”:
“Going Down!”:
“Basement Level, please”:
And the little guy falls out of sight of my lens:
A look into the lake water, below the pot, shows he is a born swimmer!:
Four of the remaining five goslings managed to get out of the nest on their own (that is, after mom smartly moved some nesting material around so the distance to the top of the pot would be shorter!).
Gosling #6 ? Well, we had to give it a hand. After struggling for a very long time, you could see he was physically exhausted and wearing down quickly. So, Bobbie went to the nest and physically removed it to the dock floor, where it quickly jumped into the water and joined the remainder of our 2021 family (more images to follow in a followup post).
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 7D Mark 2 body
- Canon 500mm, f/4 IS lens, with IS “Off”
- Bogen 3221 tripod, with Wemberly gimbal head
- ISO 500
- Aperture f/5.6
- Shutter Speed 1/125 sec. to 1/200 sec.