Goosle Goslings: Cuddling and Huddling

Large ("L") yada yada...

Mallard news first: the mallard family from Long Pond has made its way over to Mount Pond (quite a waddle!), but seem to have lost one of their number in the process. Boo. I found mother mallard and 9 of her mallardlings, but one poor duckling has disappeared. They're starting to develop feathers now, so are starting to look rather patchy which is sweet.

The Goosle goslings were being supercute; I watched them for about an hour, and all the goslings did was try to nestle underneath Mrs... She was not up for it at all: she hardly moved but they tried various tactics to try to get her to stand up so that they could hide underneath her including trying to squeeze (using their beaks as chisels!), plucking at her face, and this one simply got under her wing and stayed there for about half an hour, with its head periodically popping out from the top of her wing.
When I arrived, the goslings were on one side of Mrs. cuddling each other against her side, then one went around and plucked her face from the left, while this one (above) squeezed under her wing. After a while, this one gave up and joined the other one, and rested with its wing around its sibling. Mrs. snoozed throughout but very lightly as they were disturbing her, and she was sort of keeping an eye on me. I think she felt safe though as Mr. was just off to the left keeping watch over the situation from about 2 metres; I was right next to him when I took "huddling". He seemed rather unconcerned: I kept low, moved very slowly, and didn't look directly at them (I do think that our two forward-facing eyes are one of the key triggers for their fear).

p.s. There were so many other ones that I wanted to blip; when I've more time (perhaps this weekend) I'll make a Flickr set.