Unlike the many African animals housed at the zoo, the wild geese are “outsiders”, having chosen the green pastures and reliable water supplies of the area as their breeding ground.
A peculiar-looking bird, the Cape Barren goose has a large body, uniformly grey plumage with black markings near the tips of its wing feathers and tail, and an electric yellow beak.
Their goslings are adorable bundles of black-and-grey-striped fluff that huddle around their doting parents. Eventually they will grow to be almost 100cm long, weigh between three and five kilos and have a wingspan of almost two metres. Senior keeper Davin Kroeger said the Cape Barren geese choose to nest in the strangest places.
“Visitors can see the geese and their goslings all over the zoo – on the safari tour, one of the islands at Kubu River Hippos and even nesting on the roof of a hut in the African village,” he said.
The new chicks are a welcome boost to the Cape Barren geese population for the species’ numbers dropped so low in the 1950s that biologists feared they might be close to extinction.
Since then, various initiatives have ensured their numbers have increased, but they remain one of the world’s rarest geese species.
