PHOTOS: UC students help baby geese get to safety
Students escort goslings off sixth-floor skyway to terra firma
In what has become a spring ritual at the University of Cincinnati, biology students on Wednesday escorted five newly hatched Canada geese from their nest atop a sixth-floor skyway bridge to terra firma where they reunited with their parents.
UC College of Arts and Sciences Professor Theresa Culley said it's become a spring ritual ever since faculty noticed the geese nesting in a planter atop the bridge between Crosley Tower and Rieveschl Hall on UC's Uptown campus about five years ago.
Students keep tabs on the nest so they can move quickly when the goslings hatch, she said.
“We call it goose watch,“ Culley said.
Students and UC Professor Kenneth Petren used brooms to gently coax the fluffy yellow goslings into a cardboard box and carried them several stories down to the grassy lawn at the edge of campus. When the adult geese heard the babies' peeps coming from the lawn below them, they flew down and joined them.
In short order, the parents reunited with their babies. Later in the day, the adults safely led their chicks across Martin Luther King Drive to the pond at Burnet Woods.
UC student photographer Emma Hite of the Bearcats Student Creative Agency captured their journey.
UC Professor Kenneth Petren and a group of graduate students coax five newly hatched Canada goslings into a cardboard box atop the skyway bridge linking Crosley Tower and Rieveschl Hall.
All five goslings finally settle into the cardboard box for their trip down the stairwell to the grass lawn below the skyway.
A nervous Canada goose looks on as UC students collect the goslings.
The geese parents hear the peeps of their babies from atop the skyway overlooking the edge of UC's Uptown campus.
The adult geese come to collect their babies from a cardboard box that students placed on its side in the protection of landscaping.
The precocious goslings hurry to catch up to the adults after their reunion on the lawn of UC's Uptown campus.
All photos/Emma Hite/UC Marketing + Brand
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