In Appreciation of Canada Geese

These migratory birds can be loud, obnoxious, messy, but are also beautiful. It’s time we learned to coexist with them.

The first flocks of Canada geese arrived on a Sunday in early November. I ran to the window as their raucous gabbling signaled their arrival and marveled as they swooped across the gray Wisconsin sky and glided onto the ice-glazed surface of the Oconto River, near my house.

From November to March, flocks of ​resident Canada geese — geese that stay in the lower 48 states year around instead of migrating to the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Canada and Alaska to nest — nest on a river by the author’s home. Photo by James Mann.

That evening, as a bitter wind stripped through the frost-blackened river oaks, I slipped into my coat, donned my wool toboggan, and walked to the end of the street where it dead ends at the river. In the near darkness, I could barely distinguish the birds’ dark shapes. I was in awe, nonetheless. Feathers fluffed, necks tucked into their chests, they had burrowed in for the night around an elongated, navy-bean-shaped opening in the ice.

Here they remained from November to March, flying out each morning but always returning just before sunset. New flocks arrived daily until their ranks swelled to more than a hundred. As the days grew shorter and then longer again, my evening walks to the river become a ritual.

One early March evening I find myself by the river as usual. The temperature hovers around zero as it has for months. Spooked by my arrival, a couple of geese slip off an ice floe and fall into the water soundlessly. Blown by a strong north wind, they sidle in a small and silent drift for a moment then rise and flare away. A relative of mine once told me, “Geese always take flight into the wind.” Whether true or not, those words come to mind.

As I walk back to my house, a neighbor steps outside. “They should have moved on by now,” she says, turning an eye toward the river. I can’t decide whether her frown suggests disapproval or merely incomprehension. As her property is right next to the river, she experiences the brunt of these noisy birds waddling around her backyard, filling it with their droppings.

In recent years, urban and suburban areas have become an attractive new habitat for Canada geese. In the suburbs, they can find plenty of grass to eat and room to roam, without the threat of predators. Sometimes, though, they are known to nest in less-than-ideal locations: A female goose was once found caring for 100 goslings (from many different clutches) on an industrial office park roof.

In most cases, the surge in resident Canada geese — geese that stay in the lower 48 states year around instead of migrating to the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Canada and Alaska to nest — hasn’t stressed them. On the contrary, it’s our species that find coexistence with the geese a challenge.

In recent years, urban and suburban areas have become an attractive new habitat for Canada geese. Photo by Airwolfhound / Flickr.

Indeed, many species of animals demonstrate mutualism. A mutualistic relationship is when two organisms of different species “work together,” each benefiting from the relationship. One example of a mutualistic relationship is that of the oxpecker and a rhinoceros or zebra. Oxpeckers land on the rhinos or zebras and eat ticks and other parasites that live on their skin. The oxpeckers get food and the mammals get pest control. Similarly, clownfish live within sea anemone, whose stinging tentacles keep potential predators away. In return, the clownfish clean the anemone’s tentacles, keeping them free from parasites and acting as bait by luring fish and other prey within striking distance of the anemone.

“I like that they are here,” I respond softly to my neighbor as I continue my walk home.
Canada geese, because they’re loud and obnoxious and messy, draw the ire of many humans, and many in urban areas are trying to solve the problem by shooting them, even though all Canada geese are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Wildlife officials and animal welfare groups like the Humane Society of the United States advocates non-lethal methods to solve the problem.

The following day I discover other visitors at the river. Just as traditional food sources have declined for Canada geese, thus bringing them inland in search of food, so it has for gulls, and now an entire colony has taken over a portion of the river close to the geese.

How will the geese and gulls interact, I wonder? I fully expect a confrontation between the two groups; however, each group seems quite content with the other’s presence.

I turn to go back to the house when I hear a sudden and violent roar of an engine. Snowmobiling on the river is a common recreation during long Wisconsin winters, and a short distance up the river, someone rides a snowmobile, cutting figure eights on the ice. As the ice is much too thin for a snowmobile, I am shocked. However, as Canada geese normally lay eggs from March through April and the eggs require around 25 days to incubate, I am more concerned that this selfish intrusion of man and machine will cause the geese to abandon their nests.

The following day I see the snowmobile again, down river, looking like some Paleozoic green wasp. I quickly bundle up and cut across the backyard to a place by the river where the geese have congregated. Stiff with cold and using a heavy spruce as a duck blind, I hide from them. But they are oblivious to my presence. Strutting back and forth on the river ice, they squabble among themselves, as though vying for favorable flying positions. My heart is heavy. I know they are preparing to fly off again, and, intuitively, I know they won’t be returning.

That night, with only a faint glow in the western sky, I stand by the river edge again, perfectly quiet, shivering in the half light, searching for dark shapes burrowed around an opening in the ice and listening for the bugling sound of a male goose defending his nests. I see nothing. I hear nothing. The geese are gone.

I remain there a long while, hands fisted in my gloves for warmth, considering the mutualistic relationships of animals. I once read that humans also exhibit mutualistic relationships. Keeping pets represents a type of mutualism. Pet dogs and cats are fed and kept safe in domestication, while humans benefit from the companionship of these animals. We even have (or can have if we only allow ourselves) a mutualistic relationship with geese; we can allow the geese to do what geese do while finding better ways to deal with their annoyances. In return, we can benefit from beauty of presence, the feeling of awe they inspire as they swoop across a gray winter sky and glide to the ice-glazed surface of a river on an early winter morning.

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