Duck and Goose Are Family!

First, thanks to everyone for the many kind comments and favorites on yesterday's Blue Morning blip!

Local ponds are among my favorite places to stop for a quick morning photo shoot, and Friday morning was no exception.

I stopped by the little pond on Granny Lane, and there I saw a surprising sight: a lone Canada goose and its gosling (or so I thought) swimming around together.

The little bird would swim close to the larger bird and they would circle each other, clearly enjoying each other's company. If the littler bird got too far away, the goose would give a soft harnk!-harnk! call, and the smaller bird would come right back to it.

Thinking it a bit late in the year for a youngster so small, I snapped a few photos. I wondered about goose migration patterns and the little one's possibility of success. When I got to work, I posted a few photos online of my "goose and gosling."

Well, it didn't take long for a birding friend (or two, or three!) to straighten me out! The smaller bird was not a gosling, but a ruddy duck, either a female or a juvenile! The little "family" I had seen was not goose and gosling, but goose and duck!

Another friend shared some additional information that I didn't know: the ruddy duck is famous for brood parasitism. That is to say, the female ruddy duck regularly lays its eggs in the nests of other birds!

I did a little online research and uncovered a 1972 study of duck nests in Utah, which found that a quite large percentage of the nests (82%!) had been parasitized by either ruddy ducks or redhead ducks.

Now, I did not find any references specifically to ruddy ducks laying eggs in nests of bird species other than fellow ducks; however, I thought it interesting to consider whether this behavior might explain what I had seen!

Imagine, being a duck, growing up thinking you are a goose!

Or perhaps they're just very good friends?

Either explanation, I find charming . . . !