50 Fun Facts About Geese

In 2009 a flock of Canada geese knocked out both engines of a jet that then ditched safely in which waterway?

The Hudson became an emergency runway for US Airways Flight 1549 after the birds struck minutes out of LaGuardia, and all 155 people on board survived.

Roman legend says the honking of sacred geese on the Capitoline Hill foiled a night attack by which invaders?

Gauls climbing the Capitoline by night slipped past the guards and the dogs, but not the geese, which were kept on the hill as birds sacred to the goddess Juno.

Bar-headed geese are famous for migrating over which mountain range, at heights where the air holds little oxygen?

The Himalayas stand between the birds' winter homes in lowland India and their breeding lakes in Central Asia, and tracked flocks have crossed at about 6,400 metres.

Goose bumps take their name from the pimpled skin of a goose after its feathers have been what?

Plucked goose skin is dotted with raised bumps where the feathers were rooted, and human skin copies the look when tiny muscles pull each body hair upright.

Konrad Lorenz studied which behavior by getting newly hatched geese to follow him as if he were their mother?

Imprinting happens in a short window after hatching, and some of Lorenz's birds fixed on his wading boots; the work helped earn him a share of a Nobel Prize in 1973.

In the 1986 film Top Gun, which actor played Goose, Maverick's ill-fated radar officer and best friend?

Anthony Edwards played Nick Bradshaw, call sign Goose, who is killed when he hits the jettisoned canopy while ejecting from a stricken F-14.

The nene, a goose with less webbing on its feet than its relatives, is the state bird of which US state?

Hawaii's nene is thought to descend from Canada geese that reached the islands about 500,000 years ago and then adapted to life on dry volcanic slopes.

Sixteen overlapping feathers, usually from a goose, are set into a rounded cork base to make which sports item?

Shuttlecock feathers all come from the same side of the bird, left or right, because the two sides curve differently and a mixed set would spoil the flight.

A famous flock of guard geese once patrolled the warehouses of a Dumbarton, Scotland, firm that made which product?

Whisky maturing at the Ballantine's distillery was watched by geese known as the Scotch Watch, because geese honk loudly at any stranger or unfamiliar sound.

The giant wooden flying boat nicknamed the Spruce Goose, which flew only once, was built by which American tycoon?

Howard Hughes disliked the Spruce Goose nickname, and it was wrong anyway: wartime metal shortages forced the use of wood, but the airframe was almost entirely birch.

Which word for a male goose is also slang for a look, from the way the bird cranes its neck?

Gander has meant a male goose since Old English, while the slang sense of taking a long, neck-stretching look is far younger and dates from the 1880s.

What name, probably borrowed from Old Norse, is given to a young goose before it fledges?

Gosling is the term, and the chicks are never fed by their parents: within a day of hatching they walk, swim and follow the adults to places where they can feed themselves.

Which collective noun is used for a group of geese on the ground, as opposed to a flock in the air?

Gaggle applies only to birds on the ground; when geese fly bunched closely together, the flock is known as a plump.

Which word for a loosely coiled length of yarn is also the name for a flock of geese in flight?

Skein is used only while the birds are airborne, and the same airborne flock can also be called a team or a wedge.

Adult Canada geese are grounded for 20 to 40 days each summer by which annual process?

Molting strips away every flight feather at once, and the adults can take off again at about the time their young first get airborne.

Flocks of Canada geese gather on lawns, playing fields and golf courses mainly to eat which food?

Grass is the staple of these mostly plant-eating birds, which seize a blade in the bill and tear it off with a jerk of the head.

Geese share which scientific family of waterfowl with the ducks and the swans?

Anatidae's bigger members, the swans and geese, tend to keep the same partner for years or even for life, while many small ducks pair up afresh each season.

Which Latin word for goose names both the genus of the grey geese and a star in the constellation Vulpecula?

Anser is the star's traditional name because Vulpecula was first drawn as a little fox carrying a goose in its jaws.

Geese in a V formation are thought to save energy by riding which rising air off the wingtips ahead?

Upwash from each wingtip vortex is thought to give the following bird extra lift, much as a glider can hold its height in rising air.

Most farmyard geese in Europe descend from which wild species, the one Konrad Lorenz famously studied?

Greylag goose stock was being farmed at least 3,000 years ago; the wild bird is the largest and bulkiest of the grey geese, yet lighter and more agile than its farm relatives.

Red-breasted geese often nest beside snowy owls and falcons to gain protection from which predator?

Arctic fox raids are driven off by the birds of prey guarding their own nests, so the small geese settle inside that defended zone.

The flesh of Africa's spur-winged goose can poison people who eat it when the bird has fed on which insects?

Blister beetles carry cantharidin, a toxin that lodges in the bird's tissue and survives cooking; a dose of just 10 mg can kill a person.

Feeding bread to pond geese and ducks is linked to which deformity that leaves flight feathers sticking out sideways?

Angel wing twists the last joint outward so the feathers point away from the body; the bread link is suspected but not firmly proven, and the condition is also called airplane wing.

The seabird once known as the solan goose, which dives for fish from great heights, is better known as what?

Gannet is the modern name for a bird that hits the sea at up to 60 mph; the 'solan' part goes back to sula, an Old Norse word for it.

The oldest known evidence of geese being domesticated, about 7,000 years old, comes from which country?

China's Hemudu culture, on the lower Yangtze River, left the 7,000-year-old evidence; farmyard geese in the West were bred separately from a different wild species.

Canada geese first reached Britain in the 1600s for a king's waterfowl collection in which London landmark?

St James's Park held the royal waterfowl collection the birds were brought to join, and by the middle of the next century the species had settled wild in both Britain and France.

Which crop gives its name to a rare American goose breed once used to weed its fields across the South?

Cotton Patch geese were kept across the south-eastern United States until the mid-twentieth century to clear crabgrass and other weeds from the fields.

Which US institution still lays out twenty goose-quill pens each day it is in session?

The Supreme Court has laid out quills since its earliest sessions, and most lawyers who argue a case there take theirs home as a souvenir.

Foie gras is made from which organ of a duck or goose that has been specially fattened?

Liver is what 'foie' means, and the Romans, who fattened their geese on dried figs, knew the delicacy as iecur ficatum, or fig-stuffed liver.

Which Dickens novella is credited with helping turkey replace roast goose on Britain's festive table each December?

A Christmas Carol ends with the reformed Scrooge sending a prize turkey to the Cratchits, whose own festive dinner in the story is a goose.

On which saint's feast day, 11 November, is roast goose the traditional dinner in much of Europe?

St Martin is said to have hidden in a pen of geese to avoid being made a bishop, only for the noise of the birds to give him away.

A British saying promised that eating goose on which feast day meant never lacking money all year?

Michaelmas falls on 29 September, just after harvest, and its traditional bird was a stubble-goose, one fattened on the leftovers in the cut grain fields.

Which English city has held its Goose Fair, now a giant funfair, since at least the thirteenth century?

Nottingham's fair is named after the thousands of geese once driven there on foot from the Lincolnshire fens to be sold each year.

The Meidum Geese, a tomb painting of six birds made about 4,600 years ago, was found in which country?

Egypt's Meidum Geese comes from the tomb of Nefermaat, a prince and vizier, and shows three of the birds facing left and three facing right.

In Hong Kong, roast goose is a celebrated siu mei dish belonging to which regional cuisine?

Cantonese cooks class roast goose as siu mei, the family of roasted meats, and the dish is just as prized across the border in Guangdong.

Which French method preserves goose or duck legs by salting them and then cooking them slowly in fat?

Confit comes from the French verb confire, to preserve, though chefs now use the word for any slow cooking in fat, as with confit potatoes.

The phrase wild-goose chase is thought to come from a sixteenth-century race between riders of which animals?

Horses had to follow the erratic course set by the leading rider, the way wild geese trail their leader, and Shakespeare soon gave the phrase to Mercutio.

The stiff-legged parade march known as the goose step began in the 18th-century army of which European state?

Prussia's drillmasters called it the Stechschritt, or piercing step, and it became a badge of military discipline in the later German Empire.

Which animated film series features Mr. Ping, a goose who runs a noodle shop and raised the lead character?

Kung Fu Panda casts James Hong as Mr. Ping, the goose who found the baby panda Po in a crate of radishes outside his noodle shop and raised him as a son.

Which ancient Greek storyteller is credited with the fable of the goose that laid golden eggs?

Aesop has the bird's owners kill it to reach the lump of gold they imagine inside, and so lose the daily egg they could have counted on.

Grey Goose, sold in a smoked-glass bottle showing geese in flight, is a French-made brand of which spirit?

Vodka from France was the selling point: an American businessman created the brand in the 1990s and hired a cognac maker to produce it, setting it apart from Eastern European rivals.

In Selma Lagerlöf's classic novel, a shrunken boy named Nils flies across which country with a flock of wild geese?

Sweden's teachers' association commissioned the story as a geography reader for schools, which is why the flight takes in every one of the historical provinces.

Untitled Goose Game, the 2019 hit about a goose pestering an English village, was made by a studio in which country?

Australia's House House, a four-person team in Melbourne, got the idea from a stock photo of a goose that one of them posted in the studio's chat.

Which French author's story collection, home of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, was subtitled Tales of Mother Goose?

Charles Perrault issued the collection in the 1690s under his son's name, and it is the first firmly dated appearance of Mother Goose stories.

The soldiers known to history as the Wild Geese left which country to serve in continental European armies?

Ireland lost a whole Jacobite army in 1691, when Patrick Sarsfield's men sailed for France under the Treaty of Limerick, the original Flight of the Wild Geese.

Which French composer wrote the Mother Goose Suite as a piano duet for two young children?

Maurice Ravel wrote it for Mimie and Jean Godebski, aged six and seven, the children of friends, and it was later reworked for orchestra and as a ballet.

The Battle of Goose Green, fought by British paratroopers over a remote farming settlement, belongs to which conflict?

Falklands War paratroopers of 2 Para attacked in the early hours of 28 May 1982; the settlement had grown up as the base of a vast sheep farm.

Which Disney animated film features Abigail and Amelia Gabble, two English geese on holiday in France?

The Aristocats has the sisters help pull the alley cat O'Malley out of a river, then lead the cats to the edge of Paris before leaving to meet their tipsy Uncle Waldo.

In the 1996 film Fly Away Home, a girl guides orphaned Canada geese on their first migration by flying what?

An ultralight aircraft was the real-life method too: Bill Lishman began training Canada geese to follow his in 1986 and led them on a migration in 1993.

In which US state is the playground game Duck, Duck, Goose usually played as Duck, Duck, Gray Duck?

Minnesota pickers may call out green, purple or yellow ducks as they circle the ring, and the chase begins only on the words gray duck.