cattitude and I went for a walk this morning, and saw some very young/new-looking goslings. There were two pairs of adult Canada geese, one pair with eight goslings and the other with five. A few of the goslings still had yellow fuzz on their heads, and all of them were staying quite close to the parents. When we got there (and two other humans were quietly watching) the birds were on the shore, nibbling at the grass; after a bit the adults led them back over the rocks onto the mud, and then they swam to another part of the inlet. Very cute.

That's 13 more goslings than we saw in the park last year. We spent some time wondering why, and speculated that the parks department might have been deliberately removing, destroying, or boiling eggs on the theory that they already had more Canada geese and mallards than they wanted. (We saw no ducklings in 2010 either.) They may have changed their minds, or simply concluded that bird population control is a low priority when the budget is tight. It's complicated: they're native birds, and definitely part of the normal fauna of this habitat. The Canada goose is also a conservation success story. But they can make rather a mess of things (goose droppings are much more visible than pigeon droppings, and slipperier). Jon Carroll observed, some years ago, that people were complaining about goose droppings at a particular wildlife refuge in the SF Bay Area, and commented that there were plenty of parks designated for humans, but this one was being maintained for the birds. Inwood Hill Park isn't a wildlife refuge, though, it's an ordinary city park, even if we do have the last bits of salt marsh in Manhattan (though laws about protected songbirds apply, as do city laws about shooting things). Canada geese are also a potential risk to aviation, but I don't think stopping the geese from breeding in city parks is going to make much difference to that (especially since there is a federally protected wildlife refuge next to JFK Airport).