Intro to goose body language please

[MrsVirginia]

Here are a few pics. All introductions went great. He immediately went to guarding everyone.

 

[LilyS]

As I see it, geese have several levels of fright:

Level 1: Apprehensive. They still want to investigate and they inch closer, but with their necks held somewhat low, necks quivering on and off.
Level 2: Uneasy. They stay put or back off a little, but the quivering intensifies and they might give a small hiss.
Level 3: Frightened. They close in, necks quivering, honking, hissing, rustling feathers, trying to bite.
Level 4: Attack mode. Like level four, but decisively attacking and biting, also using their wings and sometimes claws as weapons.
Level 5: Scared out of their wits. Screaming, running away from threat with wings outstretched. Goslings will try to find a parent to hide with. Threat to great or too sudden to fight.

I've never seen aggressive goslings; the ones I've seen tend to skip level 3 and 4 and go directly from 2 to 5.

When my goose is happy about something, like if he finds his favorite weed, he'll make a happy, throaty low sound like "hraff-hraff-hraff-hraff".

When he's excited about something, like going for a walk or having a (human) friend visit, he'll honk loudly, stand tall on his toes and flap his wings, sometimes making small jumps. Then he comes running or walking very quickly, mostly with his wings out and neck stretched forward (I'm guessing because of aerodynamics, haha), still honking.

When he meets his human friends, he'll greet them by honking loudly and stretcing his neck forward. They do the same, and they'll all gossip for a while.

If he's unhappy about something (like not going for a walk), he'll honk softly but incessantly while pacing back and forth.

If he's tired (or if he doesn't want to go home yet), he'll make little whining noises and walk away.

When he sees a bird or a plane in the sky, he'll stand still like a statue, watching with one eye.

This one is probably just my goose: When he wants in the house, he rattles the cat flap.

Love this!

 

[GooseMine]

Oh, yes, I forgot about the head-bopping. I take that for a greeting. They do it to each other, too. It seems to me like their telling me all that went wrong since I last saw them. Actually, they remind me of the way old people will sometimes bop their heads while listing their grievances.

animaladdictions, I think you're right. There's a very thin line between excitement and apprehension for geese, and it seems to me they sometimes think "This is almost too good to be true, is there a catch?", without really believing it. My goose seems to do the neck quivering more when he's tired, too.

Someone ought to take a few years out of their lives to study and record goose behaviour and then publish The Comprehensive Goose Dictionary. I would definitely buy it!

A human lifetime is not enough to learn all that is needed to publish the Comprehensive Goose Dictionary. I had geese for 40 years, and despite every one of them having similar behaviours, each one of them was unique in the way it expresses itself. I mean, in the sense that certain behavioural patterns are found at one but not the other, or that they express the same desire but with a slightly different body language and/or sounds. And then as they age, their behaviour slightly changes as well, and this change is not uniform to all of them either. This leads me to believe that they can never be contained in a book. Nothing alive can ever be fully contained in a book. They are much more complex and always changing for anybody to be able to know everything about them. The fact that they are always changing as they age just increases the complexity of accurately describing them. No complete manual or comprehensive dictionary can ever be written about a being that goes through life. We are used to the idea of having a manual that fully tells us how to operate a certain apliance/device. What is fixed, does not change, and does not contain life, can indeed be contained and described in a manual. So the idea of a comprehensive manual only works with human made things, as they are the only things that don't change once made. But with living things not made by humans the same approach fails. No amount of years anybody spends studying geese will anybody ever be able to come up with a full comprehensive guide of undersdanding them fully. You will know a lot about them, but you will still not be able to know everything. We can all speak about a basic understanding about them the same as Goose Girl described the 5 levels, but if anybody wants more, this can be achieved by way of having a relationship with them, as long as their life cycle is. (35-40 years depending on their health and how well you take care of them). This is the only way you can know more and learn more, and decypher more. So the unknown element will always be there no matter how long you've spent time with a goose. In a way that's not so nice for our desire to know everything and contain everything, but at the same time it is nice to always have something to learn and get deeper into. Always exploring and getting deeper into things is much more enjoyable than seeing a limit beyound which there is nothing else to learn, which would be the case if anybody could write that Comprehensive Dictionary you so much want. I hope nobody will ever write it, and I am sure nobody ever could write it, even if they tried. And I'm glad its like that.

 

[GooseMine]

Thank you so much, Goose Girl!

I am confused by my gander's communication with me- he's constantly imploring me with his head up urgently saying "WheatWheatWheat". When we're all outside, he follows me around and seems to want to be around me, but if I talk to him or sit near him he will flee and make the rest of the group scared.
Today I had two little ducklings with me in the back yard and the "older group" (2 toulouse and 2 runner ducks) noticed the babies and the gander walked over with his head high and neck feathers kind of shaking. I'd point up at him and he'd stop and walk back to his group. I don't know if I interrupted an introduction or headed off an unpleasant interaction.

I hate that my older birds seem to get more and more scared of me instead of warming up to me.

Your older birds don't get scared of you because of no reason. Surely you are failing to observe something about them. Birds change as they age and they may start not to like something from your behaviour which they liked when they were younger. Your behaviour with them should slightly change as they change and age. How exactly to change your behaviour? You need to observe and experiment