{"id":90958,"date":"2020-11-03T05:25:51","date_gmt":"2020-11-03T12:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=90958"},"modified":"2020-11-03T05:43:30","modified_gmt":"2020-11-03T12:43:30","slug":"canada-geese-bathing-upside-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/03\/canada-geese-bathing-upside-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada Geese – Bathing Upside Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bathing behavior completely new to me.<\/p>\n

Like too many people I sometimes pay less attention to Canada Geese than I should. But three days ago when I visited one of my local ponds to see if I could turn up some ‘interesting’ birds the only birds on the water were geese and a few duck hybrids so I just sat there and watched the geese for a while.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In my experience bathing seems to be communal and contagious in Canada Geese so when one of them began to bathe it didn’t take long for several others to join in. On this occasion I probably paid more attention to their technique than I ever had before.<\/p>\n

The powerful large wings of geese allows them to fling more water over their bodies than I thought possible for a bird floating high on the surface. It often looked to me like there was at least a half gallon of water flying through the air. If I’m right that would be over 4 pounds of water.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The process of bathing requires very different wing shapes and angles than flight so…<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I enjoyed seeing…<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

all the wing shape variations in my photos.<\/p>\n

But on this occasion it wasn’t the wing shapes and angles that interested me most.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Suddenly I noticed that one of the geese was turning upside down in the water while it was bathing and soon two other geese began doing it too. It was hard to photograph because they did it sporadically and unpredictably and I always seemed to have my lens pointed at the wrong goose.<\/p>\n

I swear that birds get their jollies by faking out the photographer and on this occasion they must have been having a hell of a good time.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I can’t help but wonder if one of the reasons they do this is because it allows them to bring up an unusually large load of water with their wings when they turn upright again. I’m only speculating of course, there could be other reasons.<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t swear to it on my copy of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species<\/em> but I’m pretty darn sure that at least one of these geese did a complete 360, half of it underwater, while I was watching with my naked eye instead of through my lens.<\/p>\n

This was the first time I remember seeing a bird of any species turn completely upside down while bathing. And since I witnessed it several times from several birds within a span of just a few minutes I have to wonder if it’s fairly typical behavior for Canada Geese.<\/p>\n

I need to pay more attention.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bathing behavior completely new to me.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[393,5,334,1336],"tags":[5440,5439,1899,1337,311],"class_list":["post-90958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bathing-bird-behaviors","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-canada-goose","tag-bathing-behaviors","tag-bathing-upside-down","tag-branta-canadensis","tag-canada-goose-2","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/canada-goose-6437-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-nF4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}