With coaching from his mother, Brightbill was becoming a truly exceptional flier. He wasn’t the biggest or the strongest, but he was the smartest. You see, he and his mother had started studying the flying techniques of other birds. They’d sit for hours and watch how hawks and owls and sparrows and vultures moved through the air. Then they’d go up to the grassy ridge and Brightbill would practice what he’d learned. Soon, he was diving and swooping and darting and soaring around the island. The adult geese frowned at his flying tricks, but the goslings thought he was amazing.
Each morning, a gaggle of them would wait on the water for Brightbill to lead them into the sky. And then a few hours later he’d return home to Roz, shaking his tail feathers and honking about his latest airborne adventures.
“Mama! The other goslings didn’t know that warm air rises. So I found an updraft and we spent the afternoon circling around and around and hardly flapped our wings at all!”
“Mama! Did you see that lightning storm today? We knew there was trouble when the wind started blowing from the north, so we flew down to some shrubs and waited for the storm to pass.”
“Mama! We just tried to fly in formation! We all took turns at the point, but everyone liked following me the best, so I led most of the time.”