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March 4, 2004
No, no, no, not the singer, General James Taylor, the founder of Newport.
Anyway, when I arrived, there was a gaggle of geese I didn't know. Got me all excited at first, especially when I couldn't find them in either of my bird books. (I know, I need to invest in more books.) Thought I had made a rare find, so I snapped off lots and lots of pictures.
Turns out they're Toulouse geese, which are a domesticated form of the greylag geese from France, just somebody's geese out running wild. Shows you what a novice I am at birding.
They were a cantankerous bunch and fun to watch. There were some Canada geese across the Licking River and every now and then they would start honking back and forth at each other. At one point, a couple of the Toulouse ruffians got into a fight with each other.
That was exciting. I managed to catch the tail end of it, which you can see below. The one goose dunked the other completely under water.
Overall, they were a bunch of rowdy hooligans. More than once, one of them would rise up and brandish its wings in what I can only assume is the goose version of pounding one's chest.
The other geese seemed to find that very intimidating, but the sleepy mallards remained unimpressed.
I suppose a goose bite would be no laughing matter. Their bills have serrated edges like little pointy teeth. That probably comes in handy eating grass, which is what the geese spent most of their time doing when they weren't causing trouble.
