Wonderful Goosle News!

Mr. (l) and Mrs. (r) enjoy the warm morning light.

Yay! I received excellent news last night: Ann caught Mr. and took him to the Swan Sanctuary. The hook had indeed gone, but they cleaned his wound and gave him an injection of antibiotics to help him fight the infection. Jurgen kindly returned Mr. to Eagle Pond: he asked Ann whether he should find Mrs. to reunite them, but she said Eagle Pond would be fine. Jurgen released Mr. by the pond and he took off straight away and flew to the island where he found Mrs. and there were "lots of noisy greetings"!
SUCH a relief: well done Ann, and I'm also so grateful to the Swan Sanctuary (yet again) and Jurgen for their help.

My mother and I visited Eagle Pond first thing this morning, before our usual Sunday morning coffee: the light was beautiful and the pond was quiet. We found Mr. and Mrs. together there with the Goosle fledgling nearby. The other little fledgling was also nearby: it always hangs around with other geese (presumably for safety) even though they don't like it... Mrs. was chasing it around madly today, and eventually it skulked off to hang around near the Canada geese... At one point it followed my mother in an attempt to join our "flock"!
Once Mr. and Mrs. get riled up chasing that little fledgling around, they also turn on the Goosle fledgling more. Little G. was standing near Mrs. before she ran off to chase the other fledgling, and when she returned she snapped at the little Goosle which it didn't see coming. The little Goosle is spending more time alone and Mr. (often) and Mrs. (when she's riled up) now push it away more. My mother gently suggested that little G. should team up with the other little fledgling as they'll both need a buddy soon, but it (obviously) doesn't work that way, and the little Goosle also chases the other fledgling when it gets the chance...

There were two interesting (peaceful) "fisherman moments" today: one of the anglers approached me and asked if I'd noticed that the father had been taken yesterday. I thanked him and said that I did know, and he replied, "We took it to have the hook out". I'm not sure what to think: the hook was gone yesterday, but did they really catch and help him first thing before I visited? The hook was gone before Ann took it to the Swan Sanctuary but the wound apparently wasn't clean; I know that some of them are perfectly capable of being normal human beings, but I still find it hard to believe that they caught him and took him to get help. Perhaps they just removed the hook; who knows...?! The other interesting thing was that one of the fishermen did a circuit of the pond fishing out litter with a pole; he stared at me with a wry smile as he passed which made it seem rather like passive-aggressive good behaviour, but however begrudging it was, it was certainly unusual to see and rather reassuring. Even if it's resentful, if my letter makes them do showy good behaviour when I'm there then that is better than nothing.

In any case, it is such a relief that Mr. is hook-free and back to his usual grumpy self! I really struggled to choose my image: there were action shots that I wanted to share (the fledgling flying, Mrs. and the fledgling flap-drying their wings, and the fledglings being chased by Mr. and Mrs...), but it had to be a celebratory picture of the hook-free Mr. standing with Mrs. in the beautiful morning light...