The truth is I've actually NEVER gotten more than a hiss from a Canada goose! Not even the "wings out"! And I've spent like a decade making a regular habit of getting this close to the babies:
My life's dream is to one day be accepted into a flock of Canada geese.
(okay that will probably never happen but one can dream)
For real though, I'll occasionally get hissed at very early in the gosling season, but the geese around here are generally chill with me (and with most people) a few days/a week in. They might just be a calmer gang than other geese in other areas.
There are also some things I learned from being a bird owner that I also practice around geese, which I'll share in case anyone is curious:
-Intense straight-forward eye contact is predator behavior, so I generally side-eye them without really turning my face toward them.
-If I really want to stare, I'll look at them through my phone screen, which doesn't read as eye contact.
-I'll generally also approach them so the side of my body faces them instead of the front, like walking up next to them instead of walking toward them.
-I usually just stand around near them and do nothing.
-If they look too nervous, I mosey on. (It's really only the parents that ever look nervous.) If the babies wander toward me, I stand still and let them, and sometimes the parents will signal to them with a "come, children" head flick if they get nervous about the proximity.
-That said, I also never shy away, flinch, hesitate, change my pace significantly, or back off if I'm moving in a direction and they start with hissing and head bobbing. "Never show fear" is important. Hesitation and stuff like moving forward and then suddenly flinching away can also confuse and startle a bird. (It's one of the best ways to weird out a parrot and get them to bite you when you're trying to pick them up.) The point is you want to make your intentions clear.
For geese, I go in a clear direction and I'm never walking directly *at* them, so I always assume they'll get the idea and calm down once I pass. And they do.
But yeah, you don't ever want a goose to look at you and say to himself, "I think I can take that person." If you watch goose-on-goose violence, the aggressor very often only charges after the other one starts hunching back.
I think the closest I've come to a goose in real fight mode was this chest-thumping-equivalent dude:
But alas, I was turning right, so I didn't get to see what would have happened. The female walked off the sidewalk when I got to the intersection, and the male gave a pretty weak hiss all things considered, so I don't think they would have attacked even if I'd gone straight.
Anyway, that's Goose Approaching 101! (I take no responsibility for any resulting goose attacks.)