This has to be one of the weirder outdoor videos I’ve seen, only because I’m not entirely sure what is going on…
It appears that a flock of greylag geese are flying in their typical v-formation when the flying pattern lines up with a boat on the water. The flying birds seem to match the speed of the boat almost perfectly.
The geese are shown flying incredibly close to the life-vest-wearing (safety first) boater, and then the woman has an idea…
She starts to lift her hand to touch the belly of the goose, and the goose allows her to do so. The woman puts her hand underneath the goose and the bird suddenly stops flapping its wings to stay in flight.
Now, the boat-goer seems to be fully supporting the weight of the goose, and the goose is just going along for the ride. I like to think that the bird is thinking “Damn I’ve been flying forever, what a nice break, I didn’t know this was an option.”
The rest of the flock stay in formation, still flapping their wings, as the goose being held by the boater just keeps its wings out in place to glide through the air with the assistance of the boat.
The orange-beaked-bird stays in the boater’s hand until the end of the footage, in which it appears that the goose is about to fall back with the flock once again and fly on its own.
The Twitter video is linked below and captioned:
“Why? Just why?”
I’ll tell you why…
Imagine if we just had to walk everywhere. That would be awful right? To be dependent on yourself as your only mode of transportation?
That’s why humans invented wagons and bikes and cars and planes: so something else can do all the work and we just sit back and relax.
This goose was smart enough and open-minded enough to say “I’m gonna just hitch a ride on this lady’s hand.” Props to this goose for being a trendsetter.
People in the comments weren’t very happy about the wildlife interaction for some reason though:
This doesn’t seem like something that should be done.
— Cloudy 🏴☠️ ₳ 💎 (@Cloudy_Judgemnt) April 25, 2023
Why do people feel the need to touch everything? It’s not enough to have the cool experience of being alongside them as they fly, we have to touch them too and probably stress them out as they’re never touched while flying. Just watch and observe…
— Broc (@Broctimus_Prime) April 25, 2023
Others reveled in the goose’s intuitiveness and applauded the funny, “hitchhiking” bird:
Bird figures out he can get where he’s going with zero effort.
— Shannon Nutt (@ShannonNutt) April 25, 2023
Hours of flappin’ can probably get quite tiresome.
— Daniel Miller (@RedBlackFilms) April 25, 2023
That’s nature’s conservation of momentum and energy in action. Amazing! The bird isn’t stalled. It’s wings still make lift/energy. Same as a bicyclist in motion holding on to a car. Not abuse. Bird could fly away & break formation at any time.
— Craig (@crossky) April 25, 2023
