This is Bird Note.

In spring and summer, the paths around local ponds might have some fluffy obstacles, young

gozzlings, along with their caring and defensive parents.

Adult Canada geese lose their flight feathers for several weeks in the summer, often while

they're raising a brood of gozzlings.

Without the ability to fly away from people and with their young to protect, grounded

geese may act a specially territorial.

The adult's hiss lets you know that you should give the geese in their gozzlings some space.

Fortunately for a growing family of geese, newly hatched young are able to swim and even

dive underwater within just 24 hours.

So even if these birds can't take to the sky, they can splash into the pond to get away

from foxes and other land-born predators.

In just 10 weeks or so, the gozzlings will be making their first attempts at flying and

the adult geese will be sporting fresh new feathers for their big journey south in the fall.

For Bird Note, I'm Michael Stein.