Circles

Today one of the geese at the pond beside my workplace had her eggs hatch. Her nest was a mess of down feathers and eggshells, and the fuzzy-looking goslings, five in all, tottered about uncertainly, nibbling on blades of grass and dandelions beneath their parents' watchful eyes. Now and then they would obediently trundle into the pond behind their father and paddle the unfamiliar waters diligently, but once he flung himself from a small height--barely a handsbreadth--and the goslings huddled together piteously, afraid to take the plunge. He noticed quickly and circled back to rejoin them on land. I often saw them walk into each other and fall down, only to struggle up and dizzily wander off in the opposite direction from which they had come.

I saw one other interesting thing. The pond holds another brooding goose-hen and her mate, a pair of ducks, and many carp and other fish besides. These two ducks were swimming across the water when the hen, scarcely slowing, sent forth a cloud of excrement in the water behind her, which expanded, dissipating as it sank. Suddenly there welled up from the blackness below a swirling, twisting mass of orange, now dull, now shining in the half-light of its depth. Momentarily I recognised this as a multitude of goldfish, fist-sized, who were frantically taking nourishment from the waste of the duck. Two among their number were as black as leeches.