For the past few days, my street has become the new home to a gaggle (or perhaps a few gaggles – I can’t tell one from the other) of Canada geese. At certain times of the day – typically in the morning and mid-afternoon, you can see them, just hanging around.
Fun fact: Gaggle is the term used for a flock of at least five geese not in flight. A flock of geese in flight is called a skein.
It’s not unusual to see geese in nearby High Park, where there’s plenty of greenery, the lake is nearby and car traffic is low. It’s considerably more so to see them wandering about on a residential street and in driveways:
Here are a couple of shots of them walking down the street, Reservoir Dogs style:
Their visits might have been brought about by people feeding them. For the past couple of days, I’ve noticed that someone’s been dumping piles of bread crumbs near High Park subway station, and the geese have taken to dining and even lying down there:
3 replies on “The Local Gaggle”
They have southern neighbors in Lambertville, NJ. These guys (http://www.amandaorson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ducks.jpg) just walk right into the middle of traffic, doing their duck thing.
The funniest part of it all was watching a policeman break ranks to shoo them away with his horn. When I asked if he had done this before he sighed and said, “all the time.”
They are hanging out at the Dundas West mall too and it looks like someone dumped a big bag of seed down for them there. Cars are being stopped trying to get in and out around them and I wouldn’t dare try the pedestrian walk where they are gathered. Absolutely no fear of people.
[…] In my neck of the woods in Accordion City – just north of High Park, a huge area of green in the west end covering 400 acres and just north of Lake Ontario – the big birds who strut about are Canada geese. I wrote about them about this time last year in an article titled The Local Gaggle. […]