Quick Facts: Red Breasted Geese

Greetings dear friends and welcome to the week of the red breasted goose. In this week’s quick facts we will take a look at some of the more interesting facts about these birds of a feather.

The red breasted goose is a native of North Eastern Europe. Siberian is literally its middle name. It also can be seen as far south as Greece. In an opinion based rant, I consider this goose to be fairly similar to other members of the species.

I mean it does traditional goose things like migrate with weather. The red breasted geese also eat seeds, shoots, and grasses. It’s a lot smaller than a traditional goose that we find natively in America. The red breasted goose is a little bit smaller than an average mallard duck, so it’s a bit diminutive.

Experience Matters

Having worked with them I know they are small and you can see that by this week’s video that whenever the camera showed up they were timid and evasive. All birds don’t function like that. Parrots throw things like mulch and sticks at me when I approach them with a camera and the white emu alpha male attacked my camera when I entered that enclosure.

Perhaps to make up for being small and timid the red breasted goose does something that not a lot of other birds do. They protect themselves by nesting near birds of prey. That’s right, owls, hawks and buzzards and a welcome site to a red breasted goose and if a flock of them can, they will take up homes near an avian predator.

These birds of prey are great at keeping the red breasted gooses real enemies at a distance. Critters like an arctic fox really don’t want anything to do with a predator like a peregrine falcon so staying off the radar is important to the fox. Check out this week’s video for a look at the Red Breasted Geese of Timbavati Wildlife Park.