A pair of Canada geese have decided that Red Deer is the best place to raise their family for the second year in a row.
And they can’t resist the view from a certain backyard balcony.
Last week, the female goose again laid eggs in a flower pot on the backyard balcony of a home near the man-made pond at Anders on the Lake neighbourhood.
Homeowner Michael Riopel said his family named the mother goose Mayzie, after a character in the children’s book Horton Hears a Who!
He said the fowl have been a welcome and entertaining distraction.
“She is getting so much attention. There are so many pedestrians, dog walkers, on our path and they’re all stopping and taking pictures and smiling and laughing.
“It’s a lot of fun.”
But he said the goose doesn’t like to share the balcony.
“She hisses quite a bit, especially when I bring out my barbecue. I promised her I won’t barbecue any chickens,” he said with a laugh.
So far, the goose has laid two eggs. Last year, the pair arrived about a month earlier and had four eggs.
Two eggs hatched and the chicks eventually waddled to the pond with their parents, where they resided until flying south for the winter.
“(Last year) she sat on that nest for 30 days constantly. She would go out to eat and drink a little bit, and she’d be back within minutes. We had a snowstorm and she stayed there on the nest. She was all covered with snow,” Riopel said.
Related:
Snow geese heading south for warmer weather
Carol Kelly, executive director of the Medicine River Wildlife Centre, said several years ago, many Red Deerians reported mallards nesting in yards.
“We had them nesting in a tree in front of City Hall. They were nesting in the flower beds at City Hall, over by the courthouse; really bad areas,” Kelly said.
After the chicks hatched, her staff relocated the feathered families to remote wetlands, otherwise the chicks would have returned yearly.
She said few complaints about fowl have come in so far this spring.
“Right now, the goose population is so high, we’ve been told this year if somebody has goose eggs that are in a bad area, we are not allowed to pick them up, incubate them and release them. We have to destroy them.
“I think what’s happened is these geese are moving into our lovely cities where there aren’t as many predators that take their eggs and chicks.”
szielinski@reddeeradvocate.com
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