The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

THE FIGHTING CANADA GOOSE. In essaying to illustrate the home defense spirit, my memory goes out to one truculent and fearless Canada goose whose mate elected to nest in a horribly exposed spot on the east bank of our Wild-Fowl Pond. The location was an error in judgment. As soon as the nest was finished and the eggs laid therein, the goose took her place upon the collection, and the gander mounted guard. There were so many hostiles on the warpath that he was kept on the qui vive during all daylight hours. At a radius of about twenty feet he drew an imaginary dead-line around the family nest, and no bird, beast or man could pass that line without a fight. If any other goose, or a swan or duck, attempted to pass, the guardian gander would rush forward with blazing eyes, open beak, wings open for action, and with distended neck hiss out his challenge. If the intruder failed to register respect, and came on, the gander would seize the offender with his beak, and furiously wing-beat him into flight. That gander was afraid of nothing, and his courage and readiness to fight all comers, all day long, caused visitors to accord him full recognition as a belligerent power. THE CASE OF THE LAUGHING GULL. About that same time, a pair of laughing gulls had the temerity to build a nest on the ground in the very storm centre of the great Flying Cage. Daily and hourly they were surrounded by a truculent mob of pelicans, herons, ibises, storks, egrets and ducks, the most of whom delighted in wrecking households. The keepers sided with the gulls by throwing around their nest a wire entanglement, with a sally-port at one side for the use of the beleaguered pair.