Last weeks weather placed everyone in quite the good mood.
The El Nino or global warming effect was in full force as it is still winter ...but for a brief day or two it felt like summer.
That gave way to cleaning up the bikes and grabbing a pair of sneakers.
For those that have spent the winter on the rotating gerbil cages or treadmills this was your day to enjoy the sun.
And so I was one of the many and asked a friend to walk.
My favorite new find in the canal walk.
It runs in between the Schuylkill river and the Schuylkill canal and connects to a large river trail that goes all the way to Philadelphia.
Its long enough to enjoy nature, trees, and birds.
There are water fowl that winters in its muddy water.
Mallards, Canadian geese, and several Chinese Geese.
The Chinese Geese are domestic. They are large and white and I only have counted three.
I noticed last year that they were fed by a house nearby the canal.
Having googled the birds I realized they are probably someones pets.
Fast forward to our walk as we were quietly walking, talking and enjoying the sunshine.
We see the Chinese geese a few 100 yards in front of us and don’t think much of it.
They will move I thought?
As we walked closer towards them we saw that they were hovering over a spot in between the canal and the river.
It was full of brush and old leaves.
We got closer and all of a sudden the male goose started to chase us.
Quick reaction to this was to turn around and run!
We laughed and got away enough that the goose didn’t peck or bite.
I stopped to think and grabbed a large stick that would make noise.
I told her to do the same.
Lets continue our walk I said.
We turned back around and walked towards the goose and told him to stay in his place and in the canal with his girlfriend.
And with that and a few quacks he let us by.
I now knew what was going on.
The female goose had nested and they were protecting their eggs.
They can lay upwards of 50-100 eggs over their breeding season from February to June.
While these swans are graceful and pretty, they are now a bit of a nuisance as they have left “the nest”
and decided that they are more wild?
We came back around and had sticks again and were able to get by but we did see that others had turned around.
A Chinese male goose can weigh up to 22 pounds.
See something like this about 3 feet tall coming at you and its reminds you of a wild dog.
I’m unsure if anyone has called the county yet on the swans but it is a public park.
They are still pretty to look at but not fun to encounter on a basis like this.
Here’s hoping the eggs hatch soon.
They say that they are wonderful watchdogs as pets.. but pets need to stay on their property.
These geese have clearly run a fowl.