This year’s greylag goslings in West Park. All of them and both sets of parents were together in a very spread-out group, not just those pictured here.
They’ve grown so fast, they are now as big as the older birds. It’s now quite hard telling which ones are the young. Slight differences in the patterns of the plumage, and the colour of the legs. The easiest way was watching their behaviour. They younger were giving all their attention to eating. The older ones were focused on watching for danger, just having an occasional nibble.
UPDATE: These pictures were taken at the very edge of June. I visited the park early this morning, and saw a flock of twenty-four greylags grazing on one of the areas of short grass. That’s a much bigger group of greylags than I’ve ever seen in the park previously. It presumably included this year’s goslings. If so, I couldn’t tell which ones they were, though someone who knows more about birds might have been able to.
