Field Notes—

Canada Geese: Underfoot And Overhead

By Curtiss Clark

With the intense residential development of land in southern New England and especially in southwestern Connecticut, wildlife is on the move. Partridge, quail, fox, bobcats, and other birds and animals keep moving just ahead of the excavations and constructions, leaving behind only their names on street signs.

There are some creatures who have made their peace with development, however, settling into an easy cohabitation with people. Raccoons and the occasional black bear come nosing around garbage bins and birdfeeders looking for easy pickings, and deer have a notorious appetite for human horticulture. But few creatures are finding life in community with humans as easy as the Canada geese. It is for them, quite literally, a walk in the park.

Canada geese are especially fond of lawns and ponds, and suburban Connecticut has provided them with plenty of both. Countless manmade farm ponds have been absorbed into residential areas by creeping development, and fields and pastureland have been replaced by parks and manicured lawns leading right to the water’s edge.

Unlike many other species of waterfowl, Canada geese spend most of their foraging hours walking around on land. They are voracious plant eaters, and while they do dunk and bob for aquatic plants while paddling around ponds, they much prefer the never-ending buffet of a fresh-cut lawn. The combination of water and grass have made parklike settings such as Newtown’s Ram Pasture an irresistible attraction for Canada geese.

While their diet is plentiful, it is not particularly nutritious. The geese must spend 12 hours or more a day feeding just to get the nutrients they need, which means they are processing a lot of food, which means they are producing a lot of poop.

Canada geese are quite fastidious about their own hygiene, preening and cleaning themselves frequently, but they leave behind quite a mess. Each goose produces from a half pound to a pound and a half of poop each day. Some large flocks, which can number in the hundreds or even thousands, can produce tons of droppings in short order, making them a nuisance on ball fields and in other public areas where people congregate.

Connecticut’s Department of Environmental Protection lists Canada geese as the state’s largest native waterfowl species, and while the state offers advice on the conservation and protection of most native wildlife species, its nurturing policies do not offer much comfort to the geese. The DEP has an official list of “frightening methods” designed to chase them from areas where they have become a nuisance. These include pyrotechnics, Mylar helium balloons (geese do not like anything hovering overhead), and free-ranging harassing dogs.

Our perception of these birds as a nuisance is a direct result of human influences on the species. In colonial times, Canada geese were abundant in Connecticut, but only as migrants. They would swoop down in their trademark V formations onto natural lakes and ponds in their annual southern migration beginning in October. In the spring the V’s would swing around and point north as they returned to their breeding grounds in Canada.

After two centuries of unregulated hunting, Canada goose populations declined dramatically, prompting protective laws early in the 20th Century and a ban on the use of live decoy flocks. Local game breeders and hunters then released abundant flocks of the geese. Female Canada geese always return to the same area, if not the same nest, to lay their eggs, so local populations were not migrating to and from northern breeding grounds. They took up permanent residence in the state.

The birds are loyal, both to their home and to their families. They mate for life, and goose, gander, and goslings are usually inseparable.

You can still see the migrant populations of the truly wild Canada geese. They fly in formation in great numbers, high in the sky, driven by the southward procession of hard freezing lakes in Canada, starting in autumn and continuing into December and January. Most migrants have left the Connecticut area by mid-January.

These birds breed in northern Quebec, Newfoundland, and Labrador and join the great migration along the Atlantic flyway to their winter grounds and open water in the mid-Atlantic states. Their journey is 650 miles or more, and they do it in less than a week. Amazingly, some birds, clocked by transmitters, have done it in a day.

Their V formations allow them to fly with great efficiency. The successive offset line of birds flying in each arm of the V is precisely positioned to catch the lift in trailing vortex of air produced by the wing beats of the bird just ahead. The lead goose, doing all the unassisted flying, is given a break at intervals, dropping back into the formation. In the silent chill they usher down from the provinces, you can hear their soulful honk-a-lonk call for miles as they pass overhead. It echoes back to a time before there was a New England.

So with Canada geese you have a choice. You can either look down and watch your next step or look up and glimpse eternity. We could all use a few more choices like that.