The New Arrivals
- Glen Sealy
- Mar 20
- 3 min read
March 2026
I wasn't expecting goslings.
I'd come to the forest with no particular plan, just the camera and the early spring light, which had turned genuinely golden in a way that felt almost apologetic after the long grey stretch of February. And there they were, right at the water's edge: two tiny fluff balls, only days old, wobbling around on feet that were clearly several sizes too large for the rest of them.
I stayed far longer than I'd intended. This is, I've learned, completely unavoidable when goslings are involved.
There's something about newly hatched waterfowl that short-circuits rational thought. One minute, they're foraging with the focused intensity of birds who have absolutely worked out what they're doing. The next one simply sits down, plop, right there on the grass, because being a gosling is, apparently, exhausting work. Their parents watched the whole scene with the particular alert stillness of animals who have decided to tolerate your presence but haven't fully committed to it.
I kept my distance and let them get on with it.
Egyptian Geese are remarkable parents. That close, constant proximity, never more than a few feet away, always positioned between the new arrivals and anything that might be a threat, isn't just instinct running on autopilot. It's active, attentive parenting during the most vulnerable window of these birds' lives. In those first weeks, everything matters: warmth, food, safety, the absence of disturbance. Get through this period, and the odds shift considerably in your favour.
Watching it play out beside a forest lake in March is, when you think about it, genuinely extraordinary.
Successful breeding tells you something important about a place. These parents chose this spot because it provided what they needed: clean water, accessible food, a safe nesting site, and enough undisturbed space during those critical early weeks. A pair of geese with healthy goslings is, in its quiet way, a measure of ecosystem health. It means things are working.
That's easy to take for granted when you're watching two comically fluffy birds investigate a patch of grass like it might be hiding something. But green spaces - forests, wetlands, parks, the scrubby bit of ground at the end of a path that nobody's done anything with, aren't just pleasant places to walk. They're a functional habitat. The wildlife that uses them isn't visiting. It's living there, raising families there, depending on those spaces being safe, healthy, and left alone at the moments that matter most.
Access to green spaces matters for us too. The ability to step outside, slow down, and stumble across something like this, new life, first days, the whole improbable wobbling business of being a gosling, does something to a person that's difficult to quantify and easy to underestimate. These moments recalibrate things. They're also only available if the spaces that make them possible are protected and accessible in the first place.
That's worth thinking about, even on a morning when all you came for was the light.
Spring is closer than it feels. These two are living proof.
I came home with a full card and a slightly ridiculous smile, and I've thought about those oversized feet several times since. That's what getting outside does. It gives you things to carry back.
Shot in March 2026. Egyptian Geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca) with goslings.
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