In 1936, Dr. T. S. Roberts and his assistant, Walter Breckenridge, were driving on the road between Minneapolis and Madison, Wisconsin, heading to the American Ornithologists Union annual meeting in Pittsburgh, when they beheld a magnificent sight. A large flock of migrating Canada geese flew directly overhead. The pair were transfixed. Seldom had they seen such a sight, and certainly not within the last several decades.
When Roberts wrote on the species in 1932 in Birds of Minnesota, it was as a requiem. The bird had mostly disappeared from the southern part of its range. A migrating flock was “an event of special interest.” Roberts identified two major reasons for the near extirpation: the whole sale destruction of its habitat that drained marshlands for farm fields; and the “systematic slaughter” of birds. A species that had been joyfully greeted by Native Americans and early settlers as the birds returned in the spring to ease human hunger at the end of a long winter, had become rare.
Fast forward 85 years. On Wild River Audubon’s 2020 Christmas Bird Count, 1664 Canada Geese were seen, making it the most common bird observed by far. What had happened?
In great part, the success of the Canada Goose tracks the vast changes to the landscape that we colonizers have made. In particular, the numerous lawns, parks and golf courses that have replaced a more varied habitat have bolstered the number of Canada Geese. Geese eat the grass. Grass is, in fact, a natural food. And the expansive stretches of green give an unobstructed view to parents worried about predation on goslings.
Canada geese build a nest on the ground out of reeds and coarse grasses, lining it with down. Occasionally they may usurp a pre-existing eagle or hawk nest. In a tree This was seen by a startled observer this past spring on South Center Lake off Grand Avenue. Geese are monogamous and mate for life, with very few “divorces”. The naturalist Jim Gilbert claimed that he gave up hunting the morning he heard the honking of a goose whose mate had been killed.
Two to eight eggs are laid in the nest and incubated only by the female. Few readers need to be reminded what a territorial male guarding the nest sounds and looks like: the hissing, the honking, the outstretched neck. Young hatch after 28-30 days and may remain with the parents the entire first year.
Individuals, particularly those in the northern part of the range, will migrate south, but increasingly, geese do not, if open water and sufficient food are available on the breeding grounds. When they do migrate, the flocks are loose groupings of families, and they fly both day and night, often taking off at dusk.
The Canada Goose is one of those fortunate species that saw a population increase from 1966-2015. The 2015 population size was estimated between 4.2-5.6 million individuals.
We tend to think of vast numbers of geese plumped out on a lake shoreline, leaving behind their messy excrement and consider them a nuisance. However, it would be hard to name a more elegant or graceful bird, one which is generous enough to afford us a peek into its domestic life. We should perhaps count our blessings that they are abundant and not, rather instead, at extinction’s door.
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