Endnote

While talking with Dick about the NYD situation, two groups of geese flew over, headed toward the UI pond.  I later drove out that way, and, sure enough, some 100 geese were feeding on the sunny hillside between the Mall and the pond.  After running some errands, I parked, with my McDonalds McChicken sandwich, at the bottom of the hill, with the closest geese probably 60 yards away, but slightly out of view.

In perfect timing, a group of about 15 geese came in high, from the northeast, set their wings, and came in.  High, they started dumping air.  They came around downwind and passed slowly over the other geese, and aborted.  One goose, perhaps particularly tired, back pedaled on in.  The other geese made a circle over the pond, went downwind of their target, and approached again.

Back pedaling, some of them were motionless.  Instead of landing more or less at once, their line stretched downwind, s  o they landed more or less one at a time, necks down, until they lit, then heads up, looking around, presumably for danger.The sight was indeed beautiful - the sun at my back, and thus on their breasts - a beautiful, clear, blue-bird day.

As I finished my McChicken, two more came in, high, from the northeast.  They made it in on a single pass.

Over the next several days I rode out to watch `the UI geese’.  Parts of the `gaggle’ grazed not more than 30 yards from my position, in the parking lot behind the mall.  I notice big birds, coincidentally close, but also smaller geese, farther away, and the mallards, like bees in contrast.

The geese I shot out at Albion weighed about 15 lb each.  I supposed these to be of the greater type.  Some of the geese at UI looked markedly smaller. So, with a few pellets of a single 1-1/8 oz. load … I felled 30 lb of geese.