If you’re a parent, this lockdown may have you stressed. Even if you’re just sharing a space with kids who would normally be in school, it can be tough. But however many kids are in your house, you definitely don’t have as many to look after as this Canada goose from Saskatoon.
The First Discovery
A Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada man was trying to find ways to fill his days during lockdown. “I was out every night walking on the riverbank looking for beavers,” said Mike Digout. “Of course, there was a lot of geese activity as they were coming from the south and looking for a place to nest. It got to be quite entertaining to watch the geese fighting.” However, it wasn’t fighting geese that ended up most intriguing. In May, when goslings started hatching, Digout specifically started to look for them. One evening, he saw a Canada goose with 16 babies–way more than usual. “I was stunned,” he says. “So I started going back every night looking for this mom and her goslings, and every day it seemed like she had a bigger group.” (1)
The Growing Family
Mike Digout was right–every day, this goose was “collecting” more goslings. In a Facebook post on May 26th, he captioned a photo, “This momma was watching 26 goslings today in Saskatoon. Must be A Catholic goose.” The numbers continued to rise, moving up to 47 goslings with the mother during the day. “Either it’s a gosling daycare while the other adults eat,” says Digout. “Or she has adopted–or sometimes stolen–goslings from other families.”
But this isn’t an uncommon phenomenon in geese. Usually, a Canada goose will lay up to six eggs on her own. But a collection of geese joining together to split parenting duties is not uncommon. This is called a “gang brood.”
Unusually, however, many of the goslings stayed with this one mama goose at night. “At night the mom still had 36 of them going to sleep underneath her. It’s such a sight to see,” says Digout. (2, 3)
“Such Welcoming Parents
As Digout followed the evolving gang brood, he was impressed by the mother goose’s composure. “It was incredible how calm she was with so many goslings around,” he says. “She seems like such a patient mom.”
Jamie Harder is an employee of Saskatoon’s Meewasin Valley Authority. Meeewasin, named for the Cree word which means beautiful, is a “nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving the cultural and natural resources of the South Saskatchewan River Valley.” According to Harder, these gang broods can end up with over 100 geese.
“They are just such welcoming parents,” she says. “They take in whatever goslings are around.” (1, 2, 4)
Growing Up Too Fast
The goslings are adorable when they’re little—”like little tennis balls with legs,” as Digout describes them–but they have an additional advantage for this overworked mom. Newly-hatched goslings are small. As they got older, they couldn’t all fit under her wings. She solved the problem by letting them sleep in a pile, watching them as they slept. (1)
