PIcture Pause - Goose Family

Good morning, All.  I'd like to introduce you to a family of Canada Geese I've been watching off and on over the past couple months. 

From left to right: Ike (who I suspect might be Isabelle), Dad, Mom, and Mike.

I'm a little sad that I never made it down to the lake in time to catch the goslings when they were still small and puffy.  They've only fledged out fully in the past week.  And if Ike there wasn't in the processing of cleaning his/her foot, you'd see its head feathers are still pretty light in comparison to the others.

Anyway, this is the first year since I moved here that any waterfowl on that lake has had babies reach adulthood.  (Or in the case of Mike and Ike, young adulthood.)  Either the eggs never get a chance to hatch or the babies get wiped out by hail or predation.  So YAY for Mom and Dad Goose getting these two darlings this far.  Pretty soon, they'll stop acting like a family group and go their separate ways.  Mike and Ike will have to finish growing up on their own.  But I think they'll do fine.  The hardest part is over.

And pretty soon I'm going to have to let them go.  Once they stop hanging out as a foursome, I won't be able to tell them from the rest of the geese out there.  =o(