Sunday Goose Blogging – 22 May 2016

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As promised, here’s our local crop of Canada goose babies. First up, this is one of the goslings that we originally saw a few weeks ago. As you can see, he’s going through those traumatic teenage weeks. But I’m sure he’ll get over it and grow up to be a majestic, honking adult:

And here comes the brand new crop of babies:

Aren’t they adorable? But I’ll tell you something: I’ll never complain about photographing the cats again. These little guys are hard. You can’t get too close or else the mama geese get upset. So that means using the longest zoom setting on the camera. And these goslings zigzag along relentlessly. Keeping them in focus and in the middle of the viewfinder is tricky business. But I succeeded a few times:

Here’s a couple of them taking a (very) short break from the grueling task of eating whatever it is they’re eating.

Finally, breakfast is over and it’s nap time under the watchful eye of mama.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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