Regarding Chicken Corner's secrecy about the location of a nest for Canada geese at Echo Park Lake...

 The Illinoisan in me chuckles at the idea of keeping hush-hush about a Canada goose's nest for its safety. Canada geese--or more precisely, their urine and feces--are the plague of suburbia in pretty much every part of the country drained by the Mississippi River. Most Midwesterners regard Canada geese as rats with wings. Their longtime status as an endangered species, making it illegal to kill them, has made them all the more ubiquitous in the nearly complete absence of the foxes and wolves that are their natural predators.

I'm not surprised that one would find a Canada goose's nest along the shore of Echo Park Lake. The lake is a stormwater retention basin akin to the ones used for flood control in most Midwestern suburbs. Like those ponds, most of its surrounding vegetation has been mowed down to the water line for aesthetic reasons. This makes it an ideal habitat for the geese, who can nest near the water line without worrying about predators lying in wait in the reeds.

Peter McFerrin