An Old Goose

Not very often can tell a birds age by looking at them. One day I went out to a local park, Sequiota Park, in Springfield Missouri to get away (with my camera of course lol) and I spotted this old Canada Goose or some may say Canadian Goose. You can clearly see the gray in it's feathers. His black head faded as it (not sure if male or female) proudly swam around and often showed off its wings by waving them around. It stayed close to another group but stayed back from them to keep a little bit of distance.

I guess at its age, it didn't like the water on its feathers. Anytime it swam, it would find something it could stand on to get a little higher and would start fluffing its feathers and shaking its wings to clean itself. Can't say I blame them since the pond water was full of algae at the time. It hadn't rained much, so the water from the pond was stagnant.

You will often find geese near a water and grass combination area because they do like to eat grass, especially when they are feeding their young. That's why they are popular at parks and yards with ponds. They say a goose will live an average life span of 10 to 25 years in the wild. There are some that have made it 30+ years in the wild, and there's a report of one making it 40 years in captivity.

I find it odd that in my research, a lot of the websites I found say birds never go gray. I'm not a scientist and I haven't studied birds, but I would say this photo shows otherwise. I wonder just how old it really is. Could it be older than the average goose? Has it beaten the odds?

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Have you ever seen an older animal in the wild showing its age? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.