Ottawa, Ontario - A gaggle of geese

We took another walk today on the path by our home and were treated to a veritable herd of beautiful goslings. The Canada Geese are back home from wintering in the southern U.S. and busy raising babies.

When we approached on the path, a couple of adults started walking toward us. This is the part where we get hissed at and bitten, I thought. They will often attack pretty ferociously, people included, if they feel they or their babies are threatened. It turns out these were not aggressive, and had probably been fed by people before, but they watched our every move just in case.

We saw that 4 adults guarded no less than 65 (by Nickie's count) little goslings. Canada Geese only lay about 3 to 8 eggs at a time, so these are obviously the combined offspring of the whole flock and these 4 adults are on babysitting shift. (If you look by the river and trees in the background, you'll see some other adults resting and watching.) We had brought some unsalted peanuts for the squirrels, but we just couldn't resist these cuties so we cracked open the shells and fed them. Interestingly, 3 of the babysitters examined the peanuts but wouldn't eat, letting the babies snap them up. The 4th did eat one and was immediately bitten and chased by one of the other babysitters for it. Apparently the babysitters are expected to leave all the food for the babies, and will get a nasty reminder if they do otherwise. Yes, there is a social order, and you'd better follow it mister!

Ottawa, Ontario - Scary weather

Recently, the wind kicked up like we'd never seen or heard before. First it started howling and wailing and then suddenly it got even more violent until we were afraid the windows were going to shatter. It was terrifying, actually. I was online so I quickly looked up weatheroffice.gc.ca to see what was going on. It said there was a severe thunderstorm watch, and that such conditions can lead to tornadoes so be alert to local conditions. The sudden winds died down somewhat, and we were convinced that if that wasn't a tornado, it was something close to it.

We live on a street with a few other large apartment buildings, so when I looked out the window before all this happened and noticed that the streets were deserted, it struck me as more than a little weird. It looked like a ghost town. Apparently, Canucks watch the weather reports very closely and knew to stay inside. I can see we're going to have to develop this habit too.

Well, we found out a couple of days later that indeed, no less than three waterspouts (tornadoes over water) formed over the Ottawa River nearby. One jumped onto land as a very strong F0 tornado (not quite an F1 on the Fujita scale) just west of us, travelled southeast (south of us), and ripped the roof off a building, amongst other things, before petering out. We thought that one must be the explanation for all that we experienced. But we discovered that there apparently was another tornado that didn't make the news, which hit the parkland between us and the river - a close call indeed - and ripped out several large trees by the roots in a neat path. The roots came out with big chunks of earth still attached, up to around 8 feet high. Even experiencing the violence of this storm didn't prepare us for what we saw here, and it was hard to imagine the force it must have taken to wreak this kind of damage. It's one thing to be in California and hear about tornadoes from afar; it's quite another to experience such powerful forces for yourself. We were awestruck.

This is a panoramic "stitch" of 2 photos. The damage continues off to the right.


Nickie standing next to one of the root masses gives you an idea just how big these trees are.


The trees fell almost like dominoes. This one, like several others, fell and broke on top of the ripped-out roots of the next tree.


A closer view