Your morning adorable: Goose family goes for a stroll in the park [Corrected]

When submitter "derfy" went to visit Balboa Park (San Fernando Valley, not San Diego), he very wisely brought his camera along with him. We're glad he did, because he was able to capture this wonderful shot of the park's animal inhabitants. Do the geese want to follow this family home? Well ... we doubt it. But it certainly looks that way!

See more of our readers' great photos -- or better yet, share your own -- at The Times' photo-sharing site, Your Scene.

[Correction: Boy, do we have egg on our faces -- pun only partially intended.  An earlier version of this post identified the birds shown in the photo as ducks; a number of astute readers, as well as wildlife rehabilitator Mary Cummins, advised us that they're actually geese.  We've corrected the error, and we hereby award bragging rights to those who clued us in.]

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo credit: derfy / Your Scene

Comments

[Wren]

Might those be geese?

[cg]

those are geese

[stilldreaming]

Is a blatant mistake ok to be published under the LAT banner?

I find not caring about the proper name for a barnyard bird inexcusable. What other information is plain wrong and published on the LAT website?

My previous negative, but polite, comment was not published. Guess critics aren't wanted.

[Lindsay Barnett, L.A. Times]

Hi Wren and cg, I'm very interested in your assertions that these birds are geese, not ducks -- I'm no avian expert but they sure look like ducks to me. If you have evidence to the contrary, please let me know! (I can't give you a prize for knowledge, unfortunately, but you will definitely have some bragging rights.)

stilldreaming, you refer to your previous (unapproved) comments on this post as "negative, but polite," which is a far sight from how I'd describe them. And as you can see, we did publish other comments on this post -- polite ones -- from readers who disagreed with us. So I'll have to respectfully disagree with your assertion that "critics aren't wanted" -- we welcome civil discourse (emphasis on "civil").

Thanks, readers!

[Liz]

With all due respect, I'm not an avian expert either, but these are geese, not ducks. You can tell by the animals' size and the shape of their beaks (more stubby and triangular, whereas ducks have longer, flatter beaks). These animals are much too large to be domestic ducks, and they have the longer necks characteristic of geese.

At www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/images/domgoo39.jpg and www.domestic-waterfowl.co.uk/images/pekin/peks.jpg you can compare domestic geese and ducks, respectively.

[stilldreaming]

Ms. Barnett , if the best horse magazine in the country mistook donkeys for horses, would you trust that publication? Would you renew a subscription?

If an equine blogger was a magazine editor herself, and she did not bother to correct her mistake, would you still trust anything you read in that magazine? Would you accept "I'm not an equid expert?" as an explanation? (with no admission that it was a mistake.)

Is it a reflection of the current state of our media that Los Angeles Times allows such an obvious error in its online pages to persist? Is it a reflection on the lack of public education? The lack of connection with any barnyard animals?

One doesn't have to be an "avian expert" to differentiate ducks from geese. But a good journalist would make sure she either provides evidence to support her words, or corrects the error.

[duck expert]

These are dogs... dont you see.

Of course, they are GEESE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Tigerlily]

That is one Embden goose, two Toulouse geese and one Canadian goose. I raise and breed waterfowl but you dont need an expert to see these are geese. A simple google image search can tell you. Definitely do not resemble ducks and I dont know how a canadian goose could even be mistaken for one. No ducks resemble them even a little.