Geese
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50 free Geese trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Geese are easy to take for granted. They crop the turf on playing fields, honk overhead every autumn and hiss at anyone who strays too close to a nest. Look closer and they turn out to be some of the most remarkable birds on Earth: long-distance travellers that cross mountain ranges and seas, devoted partners and fierce parents, and animals that people have farmed, feasted on and told stories about for thousands of years. This quiz covers the whole bird. There are questions on goose biology and behavior, from how a flock flies and what it eats to how the young learn whom to follow. There are questions on wild species from the tundra to the tropics, and on the special vocabulary English keeps for geese. The rest looks at geese in human life: ancient legends, feast-day dinners, fables and fairy tales, famous films and games, and the surprising number of planes, battles and brands that carry a goose in their name. It is written for bird lovers, pub-quiz teams, teachers and anyone who has ever been chased across a lawn by an angry goose. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave knowing more than when you started.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In 2009 a flock of Canada geese knocked out both engines of a jet that then ditched safely in which waterway?
The Hudson
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.
Q 02Roman legend says the honking of sacred geese on the Capitoline Hill foiled a night attack by which invaders?
Gauls
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.
Q 03Bar-headed geese are famous for migrating over which mountain range, at heights where the air holds little oxygen?
The Himalayas
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.
Q 04Goose bumps take their name from the pimpled skin of a goose after its feathers have been what?
Plucked
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.
Q 05Konrad Lorenz studied which behavior by getting newly hatched geese to follow him as if he were their mother?
Imprinting
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.
Q 06In the 1986 film Top Gun, which actor played Goose, Maverick's ill-fated radar officer and best friend?
Anthony Edwards
Anthony Edwards played Nick Bradshaw, call sign Goose, who is killed when he hits the jettisoned canopy while ejecting from a stricken F-14.
Q 07The nene, a goose with less webbing on its feet than its relatives, is the state bird of which US state?
Hawaii
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.
Q 08Sixteen overlapping feathers, usually from a goose, are set into a rounded cork base to make which sports item?
Shuttlecock
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.
Q 09A famous flock of guard geese once patrolled the warehouses of a Dumbarton, Scotland, firm that made which product?
Whisky
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.
Q 10The giant wooden flying boat nicknamed the Spruce Goose, which flew only once, was built by which American tycoon?
Howard Hughes
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.
Q 11Which word for a male goose is also slang for a look, from the way the bird cranes its neck?
Gander
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.
Q 12What name, probably borrowed from Old Norse, is given to a young goose before it fledges?
Gosling
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.
Q 13Which collective noun is used for a group of geese on the ground, as opposed to a flock in the air?
Gaggle
Gaggle applies only to birds on the ground; when geese fly bunched closely together, the flock is known as a plump.
Q 21Red-breasted geese often nest beside snowy owls and falcons to gain protection from which predator?
Arctic fox
Arctic fox raids are driven off by the birds of prey guarding their own nests, so the small geese settle inside that defended zone.
Q 22The flesh of Africa's spur-winged goose can poison people who eat it when the bird has fed on which insects?
Blister beetles
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.
Q 23Feeding bread to pond geese and ducks is linked to which deformity that leaves flight feathers sticking out sideways?
Angel wing
Q 14Which word for a loosely coiled length of yarn is also the name for a flock of geese in flight?
Skein
Skein is used only while the birds are airborne, and the same airborne flock can also be called a team or a wedge.
Q 15Adult Canada geese are grounded for 20 to 40 days each summer by which annual process?
Molting
Molting strips away every flight feather at once, and the adults can take off again at about the time their young first get airborne.
Q 16Flocks of Canada geese gather on lawns, playing fields and golf courses mainly to eat which food?
Grass
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.
Q 17Geese share which scientific family of waterfowl with the ducks and the swans?
Anatidae
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.
Q 18Which Latin word for goose names both the genus of the grey geese and a star in the constellation Vulpecula?
Anser
Anser is the star's traditional name because Vulpecula was first drawn as a little fox carrying a goose in its jaws.
Q 19Geese in a V formation are thought to save energy by riding which rising air off the wingtips ahead?
Upwash
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.
Q 20Most farmyard geese in Europe descend from which wild species, the one Konrad Lorenz famously studied?
Greylag goose
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.
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.
Q 24The seabird once known as the solan goose, which dives for fish from great heights, is better known as what?
Gannet
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.
Q 25The oldest known evidence of geese being domesticated, about 7,000 years old, comes from which country?
China
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.
Q 26Canada geese first reached Britain in the 1600s for a king's waterfowl collection in which London landmark?
St James's Park
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.
Q 27Which crop gives its name to a rare American goose breed once used to weed its fields across the South?
Cotton
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.
Q 28Which US institution still lays out twenty goose-quill pens each day it is in session?
The Supreme Court
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.
Q 29Foie gras is made from which organ of a duck or goose that has been specially fattened?
Liver
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.
Q 30Which Dickens novella is credited with helping turkey replace roast goose on Britain's festive table each December?
A Christmas Carol
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.