This feels like an appropriate photo for today, Thanksgiving Day, where denizens of the United States traditionally gather eat turkey together. I don’t think I have any photos of wild turkeys; they are not uncommon in the area, but I usually see them at inopportune moments, such as when I’m driving and they decide to run across the road ahead of my car.
So as a substitute for turkeys, I offer these juvenile Canada geese who I found feeding at the water’s edge in one of the state parks this past summer. Canada geese are very common, and truthfully I’m not a fan – they consolidate into large groups and shit absolutely everywhere, and in shocking quantities. I’ve seen them befoul a dock so badly that you’d swear mere geese couldn’t be the culprits.
But I digress…these goslings in shallow water at sunrise were too good an opportunity to pass up, so I grabbed a few shots while their parents hovered about protectively.
Of all the birds I encounter, I think that juvenile geese most strongly resemble dinosaurs. Their wrinkly legs and little beaks, and their overall posture and form, remind me of the raptor scenes in the original Jurassic Park movie. A set of nestlings working together could probably take me down.