The furious geese

Canada geese must be among the most unpopular birds in North America. People hate the way they take over parks, gardens, harbors, ponds, the verges of roadsides -- in fact, pretty much anywhere there's a blade of grass. People complain, most of all, about the way flocks of these big birds mess all over their lawns.

Okay, maybe it's because I don't have a lawn, but I love Canada geese. The way they honk their way across the sky in formation never fails to make me smile (especially if I was walking along staring at my shoes worrying about something). The way they honk their way across the street en masse, taking their own merry time, even though a line of cars is forming. Their velvety black necks.

Most of all, I love how furious they can be. On one side of Charles Island, off Milford, my friend Amar Kaur and I had to walk past what I am guessing were territories staked out by pairs of Canada geese settling in for the spring to nest. Canada geese mate not just for a season, but for life. Perhaps these have been their territories for many seasons before this. Though we were not close to any nests, we must have encroached on their invisible (to us) boundaries, because every twenty yards or so we were chased by a different pair of honking birds, necks held rigid, pitching themselves forward.

One goose in particular was not just protective and defensive; he was surely angry. I could feel his loathing. (Tsk, not only am I endowing this bird with human emotion, I am assuming it was male.) His honks were vicious; he opened his beak wide and, I swear, poked out his pink tongue. He flew right for our faces, and it was only when Amar Kaur waved a big stick in the air that he (resentfully) backed off. I turned around to catch a picture of this especially furious goose, and there he was, still facing me with utter defiance:

When we had passed, off he and his mate bustled into the thickets of the island, happily snuffling to themselves. They had class.

The Rookery at Charles Island

Yesterday I went out to Charles Island, a mass of rocks, vines, and tangled thickets in Milford harbor. It can be reached on foot only for an hour or two when the tide is at its lowest, along a narrow tombolo. Once May arrives, the island will be a no-go zone, as it is a protected rookery for herons and egrets. Getting across the tombolo, the weather was grim, the skies were like lead, and the wind was fierce. On the island, though, it was a wonderland, a wild kingdom. My lovely and intrepid friend Amar Kaur and I saw at least 100 black-crowned night herons dotting the trees. Great egrets, with their long lacy breeding plumage trailing down like evening gowns, had their nests in the treetops.

The longer we looked, the better our eyes got at perceiving the birds. At first, where it seemed there was one or two in a tree, the better our eyes became at seeing, we noticed two or three more, then others still. Makes we wonder about all the other things our eyes must skip over every day.

Out there on Charles Island, it was easy to forget we were so close to modern life, cars, roads, Dunkin Donuts, Wal-mart . . . we heard only the sounds of the waves; the trees and thick vines creaking; the bizarre barking sounds of the herons, so much like a dog; and what my field guide calls the "guttural croak" of the great egrets, though that doesn't do justice to the otherworldly sound, which to my ears is like the clatter of Australian aboriginal clapsticks.

Just as we began to get nervous about making it back across the tombolo before the tide swept back in, the herons started getting restless, too. When I was cozily back home, I looked up my field guide and found out they were heading off for their night-time feast of fish, mollusks, small rodents, frogs, snakes, crustaceans, and even eggs and young birds.

Before we left the island, I was startled, thinking I saw a dog-like face staring at me through the brushes - a coyote? a feral dog? - but it was a white-tailed deer, looking at me with cautious big brown eyes. It headed off along one of the well-worn deer tracks, followed by about a dozen others, all breath-takingly quiet and gentle.