Last year a Canada Goose couple adopted our pond as their nesting site. We see large flocks of geese passing through, but this is the first breeding pair that have settled here. The pond is still iced over, but a few inches of open water are now showing around most of the perimeter. Soon enough they’ll be swimming in open water.

We keep an old bale of hay on top of the connections for the pond’s siphon plumbing as insulation, and the geese used the bale last year as their nest. The goose sat on the eggs for two months, then finally abandoned them in June after they failed to hatch. I’m curious how successful they’ll be this year. Perhaps the gander is sterile, or perhaps the goose wasn’t sitting on the eggs consistently enough. Canada Geese normally mate monogamously for life, so if this couple has fertility problems I’m wondering if they’ll keep trying the same routine year after year.