Take a gander at these geese
There’s no better place to spot Canada Geese than around the retention ponds at Marketplace Mall in Henrietta. Photo by Matt DeTurck.
Doesn't it seem like Canada geese - those characters with the long black necks and distinctive flash of white up top - are just everywhere these days? What's going on?
"Basically it comes down to there's plenty of good habitat for geese in Rochester," says Mike Wasilco, regional wildlife manager for the Department of Environmental Conservation.
Geese like areas where there's short grass next to water, Wasilco says. In Rochester, that tends to mean retention ponds, like the ones at Marketplace Mall in Henrietta. But geese also congregate around the Cobb's Hill reservoir, Schoen Place in Pittsford, the Port of Rochester, and area golf courses and athletic fields.
Geese have no natural predators and tend to do well around humans, Wasilco says.
Much of the geese are residential geese - their population numbers 200,000 statewide, says DEC statistics. While geese were traditionally migratory birds, residential geese will nest in temperate areas and then travel farther south if the weather gets too harsh and food too hard to come by. Otherwise, they just stay put.
Sometimes food - often given to the birds by humans - helps keep the geese settled. But with that comes a caution: the foods that people feed geese often aren't good for the birds. Bread, for example, doesn't contain the nutrients that geese need.
In Clinton County, a dozen geese were found dead from a fungus infection which affects the respiratory system. Geese get the disease - Aspergillosis - from eating moldy grains. The DEC issued an alert asking people to stop feeding the geese.
"Feeding does help hold birds in an area," Wasilco says.
Comments for "WILDLIFE: Damn geese" (5)
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Margie said on Dec. 03, 2008 at 1:12pm
Your article does not mention why the geese have not only proliferated, but don't migrate. People intervened! Geese were bred in captivity, basically, not raised by migrating parents. They have to model the migrating behavior, and when there was no migrating to model, it wasn't going to become part of their overall behavior pattern.
I think the article would be better titled "Damn meddling humans (again)". Don't blame the geese.
Mike Williams said on Dec. 03, 2008 at 5:32pm
A Modest Propsal
No one seems to see the irony, or ironies, in the exploding goose population problem. I used to live near Cobbs' Hill, where there were two more-or-less year round features: a permanent, growing, and increasingly offensive goose population (try finding a place to spread out a towel on the lawn); and homeless people sleeping in the park. We have people going hungry right next to flocks of docile geese.
A second irony: At Thanksgiving and Christmas. we feast on store-bought, farm bred, turkeys, and then on the way home curse at the multiplying geese that are snarling traffic and fouling the landscape and the roadways.
We need to re-think the goose situation. They're not a problem; they're an opportunity. More specifically, they're not a decorative part of the fauna. They're food.
I propose that we kill two or more birds with one stone, so to speak. First, let's remove restrictions on "hunting" the birds, (actually more like sitting ducks). Imagine the homeless and the hungry, presently sleeping in the park bushes, often going hungry, instead gathered around campfires with a goose roasting on a spit. Good for them, good for us.
Second, let's re-introduce the concept of the Christmas goose. It shouldn't be hard, with a little PR. It wasn't a turkey, after all, that Scrooge gave the Cratchits.
Think of the possibilities, with a little infrastructure development, for family outings. Imagine, just after ritually acquiring the family Christmas tree, we had a subsequent adventure to bag the family goose. All we'd need, really, is a method to "bag your own" that wasn't dangerous to other humans: nets, stun guns, there are many possibilities. I can see a concession at Cobbs Hill Park, or wherever permanent populations have developed, with net rentals and the like. There could easily be a road-side dressing concession, properly regulated, like the operation we recently saw on CNN in the background behind Sarah Palin.
It's time for a new approach. With a little creativity, imagination, and some moderate change on our part, the geese are an opportunity to rediscover lost traditions and develop new ones, both culinary and family. They are also an opportunity to alleviate the suffering of the less fortunate among us in some small measure, and at the same time correct an environmental problem that we have ourselves unwittingly created.
Mike Williams
Rochester, NY
Andrew Slominski said on Dec. 03, 2008 at 9:56pm
Aww, so cute! Well, I have to agree with Margie that many of these geese did not have proper parenting to model correct migratory behavior. Maybe we should set up schools for them? Just kidding...
Frank J. Regan said on Dec. 04, 2008 at 8:35am
It may seem as though Canadian Geese are everywhere, but humans really are everywhere. Canadian Geese, like crows, starlings, raccoons, pigeons, and squirrels are one of the relatively few creatures that thrive around humans.
Most of the world’s plants and animals don’t do so well. Most, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, perish in the wake of human development and population growth. So much so that many scientists believe we are witnessing the Sixth Great Extinction event, comparable to that 65 million years ago, which saw the demise of the dinosaurs. Except this extinction event is different; it is human caused.
My point: When you see flocks of Canadian Geese and some of the other species that have managed to eek out a living amongst our rapacious species, you might think fondly of these lucky fellow creaturesâ€"instead of eyeing them as ‘pests’, that is, through the myopic lens of human hegemony.
Jessica said on Jan. 16, 2009 at 5:57pm
The reason that geese are rising in numbers (compared to many species being wiped out) is that they happen to adapt well to human-created conditions: parks and golf courses. It's annoying that people are now viewing conservation efforts negatively because they don't want to see that basically that they fed the very architecture of a crisis. Certain species become "pests" only b/c we gave them the evolutionary circumstances to do so. All the other species got wiped out in the competition because of conditions imposed by us, and that is why we are having a sixth extinction event, which does not conflict with certain species (our "pest" species) booming in numbers, since the # of those species? Very very limited compared to the full picture.
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