Canada goose

• 1. Introduction

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  The largest wild goose ever recorded was a male Canada goose. It weighed 10.9 kilograms and had a wingspan of 2.24 metres. That bird came from the giant subspecies, whose males rarely exceed 8 kilograms. This documentary follows a bird that has been rescued, exported, protected, culled and blamed. How did a goose that once needed human help become a goose that towns pay to remove? Why does a bird named for one country now nest on other continents? And what happens when a flock of them meets an aircraft engine?

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• 2. Names and Kin

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  Carl Linnaeus described the Canada goose in his 18th-century work Systema Naturae. Today the bird, Branta canadensis, belongs to the genus Branta, whose geese have largely black plumage. The gray geese of the genus Anser form the contrast. Branta is a Latinized form of the Old Norse Brandgás, meaning burnt, or black, goose. The species name canadensis is Neo-Latin for from Canada. The Oxford English Dictionary gives 1772 as the date of its first citation for the phrase Canada goose. In everyday speech, many people say Canadian goose instead.

  In July 2004, the American Ornithologists' Union's Committee on Classification and Nomenclature divided one bird into two. The smaller birds, once counted as Canada geese or as several of its subspecies, became a full species, the cackling goose, Branta hutchinsii. The British Ornithologists' Union followed in June 2005.

  The name Taverner's cackling goose shows how tangled the split became. Small Canada geese overlap with large cackling geese, and ornithologists have debated where one ends and the other begins. The birds called B. c. taverneri were once seen as a blend of three forms: minima, occidentalis and parvipes. Yet the holotype of taverneri is plainly a large, pale cackling goose. The name therefore stayed valid and was renamed Taverner's cackling goose.

  Genetics added further twists. The barnacle goose, Branta leucopsis, turned out to descend from the cackling goose lineage, while the Hawaiian goose, Branta sandvicensis, descended from ancestral Canada geese. Ornithologist Harold C. Hanson wanted to go much further, proposing six species and 200 subspecies. Richard Banks of the AOU urged caution, and the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature suppressed Hanson's proposals after criticism from Banks and others. What remains is a list of seven subspecies: Atlantic, Interior, Giant, Moffitt's, Vancouver, Dusky and Lesser.

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• 3. Size and Voice

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  A white chinstrap on a black head and neck is the quickest way to recognize a Canada goose. Only two other geese share the pattern, the cackling goose and the barnacle goose. The barnacle goose has a black breast and a gray body, where the Canada goose has a brown one. Some Canada geese show a pepper-spotted or brown neck, which is assumed to be a leucistic variety. Rarer individuals have dark cheeks, white foreheads or white necks.

  Length runs from 75 to 110 cm, and wingspan from 127 to 185 cm. The giant Canada goose, B. c. maxima, is the largest subspecies. The lesser Canada goose, B. c. parvipes, is the smallest now that the cackling geese stand apart.

  Males usually weigh 2.6-6.5 kg and average 3.9 kg across all subspecies. Females look nearly identical but weigh 2.4-5.5 kg, averaging 3.6 kg. They are generally about 10% smaller than males in linear dimensions.

  Among the true geese of the genera Anser and Branta, the Canada goose is on average the largest living species. The spur-winged goose and the Cape Barren goose are heavier on average, but they are geese in name rather than close relatives. The smallest cackling goose, B. h. minima, is scarcely larger than a mallard. Cackling geese also have shorter necks and smaller bills, which helps when the two species mingle.

  The famous honk belongs to the male. The female's call is shorter and higher pitched. When agitated or defending territory, a goose usually opens with a high-pitched hiss. Altogether, Canada geese use ten different vocalizations, each answering a different situation.

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• 4. Family Life

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  Canada geese find a mate during the second year of their lives. They are monogamous, and most pairs stay together for life. If one partner dies, the survivor may find another. A female lays two to nine eggs, averaging five, in a shallow depression lined with plant material and down. The nest usually sits on high ground near a stream, lake or pond, and sometimes on a beaver lodge. Both parents guard it, though the female spends more time there. Incubation lasts 24-32 days, with the female sitting while the male stays close. Geese can even shift their laying date in response to spring maximum temperatures, which may help nesting success.

  A brant that wandered into a Canada goose's nesting area met a grim end. The resident male attacked for one hour, pecking the brant's head into the mud until it suffocated or drowned. Researchers blamed high hormone levels and the brant's inability to leave the nesting area. Killing of another species is rare in such disputes.

  The summer molt strips adults of their flight feathers for 20-40 days. They regain flight at about the time their goslings begin to fly. Goslings can walk, swim and find their own food as soon as they hatch, eating much as adults do. Parents lead them in a line, with one adult in front and the other behind.

  Parents chase away creatures from small blackbirds to lone humans, first with a warning hiss and then with bites and wing slaps. Yet they may let unfamiliar goslings join a group with a few adults, called a crèche. Young birds reach the fledgling stage between six and nine weeks of age. They stay with their parents until after the spring migration, when they return to their birthplace.

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• 5. Flight and Survival

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  From September to the beginning of November, the autumn migration of Canada geese passes overhead. Most birds use staging or resting areas where they gather with others. Early migrants spend less time at rest stops and finish the journey faster, while later birds linger. Tagged geese on the East Coast show that some return to the same nesting ground year after year with their mate.

  A V-shaped formation at about 1 km (3,000 feet) is the signature of the flight. Geese have been reported as high as 9 km (29,000 feet), though their true ceiling is unknown. Researchers who study the V note that the front position takes the most energy, so the lead rotates. Canada geese also leave their winter grounds more quickly than their summer grounds.

  Thyroid hormones T3 and T4 are elevated in geese just after a big migration. The extra T4 is also associated with growth of the breast muscle. It is believed to help the body cope with the long journey by speeding metabolism and lowering the temperature at which the muscles work. Levels of the stress hormone corticosterone rise dramatically during and after migration.

  A 33-year-old female first tagged in Ohio in 1969 is the oldest Canada goose on record. Geese that reach adulthood in the wild generally live 10-24 years. The British record belongs to a bird tagged as a nestling, which was still alive at the University of York at the age of 31. In extreme winter cold, geese prefer urban areas to green spaces, because industrial areas retain heat.

  Eggs and goslings face a long list of hunters, including coyotes, Arctic foxes, northern raccoons, red foxes, large gulls, common ravens, American crows, and both brown and American black bears. Domestic dogs occasionally attack too, which leashing a pet can prevent. Adults, by contrast, are rarely preyed on. Coyotes, grey wolves, snowy owls, golden eagles and bald eagles are among the few that take them.

  Driving off predators usually falls to the larger male of the pair. Males draw attention to approaching animals and toll, which means mobbing a land predator without physical contact, often alongside males of other goose species. Eagles frequently make geese fly off en masse from some distance. Yet geese may seem unconcerned about a perched bald eagle, reacting only if it begins to hunt.

  Salt is a hidden danger for newly hatched goslings. In moderate to high salinity without fresh water, development and growth slow and some die. Most of these deaths come before the sixth day of life, before the nasal salt glands begin to work.

  Canada geese are also susceptible to avian influenza such as H5N1. A study using a highly pathogenic H5N1 virus found the geese susceptible. Their high mortality when infected made them useful for monitoring the spread of the virus. Prior exposure to other viruses may result in some resistance.

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• 6. Rescue and Rebound

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  By the 1950s, the giant Canada goose was believed to be extinct. Overhunting and loss of habitat in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had already driven the species into serious decline in its native range. Then, in 1962, Harold Hanson of the Illinois Natural History Survey found a small flock wintering in Rochester, Minnesota. It was the very subspecies that people had written off.

  In 1964, the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center was built near Jamestown, North Dakota. Its first director, Harvey K. Nelson, talked Forrest Lee into leaving Minnesota to run the center's Canada goose production and restoration program. Lee soon had 64 pens holding 64 breeding pairs of screened, high-quality birds. Private, state and federal resources joined the effort, which relied on the expertise of many individuals. By the end of 1981, more than 6,000 giant Canada geese had been released at 83 sites in 26 counties in North Dakota.

  Ohio had lost its Canada geese after the American Civil War. The state reintroduced them in 1956 with 10 pairs. The population was estimated at 18,000 in 1979 and reported at roughly 130,000 in 2015, with numbers likely to keep rising. Many once-migratory birds now stay through the summer. Officials credited the lack of natural predators, the abundance of water and the plentiful grass of manicured urban lawns.

  Lawn grass is the favored menu in towns. A goose grasps a blade in its bill and tears it with a jerk of the head. When beans and grains such as wheat, rice and corn are available, it eats those too. In water, it slides its bill along the bottom to feed on aquatic plants and plant-like algae such as seaweed. Insects and small fish are an occasional extra. Urban geese also pick food from garbage bins and take grain from people in parks. They graze in open areas with wide clearance, which helps them spot predators.

  Golf courses, public parks, beaches, sports fields and planned communities offer safe water beside food. Interbreeding between migratory subspecies and the introduced non-migratory giant subspecies has made geese a year-round feature of such places. Large flocks now live permanently along the Pacific coast, from British Columbia's Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island south to the San Francisco Bay area. On the Atlantic side, resident populations live on Chesapeake Bay, in Virginia's James River regions, and in North Carolina's Triangle area of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, plus nearby Hillsborough. Some have settled as far south as Florida, on retention ponds in apartment complexes.

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• 7. Beyond North America

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  Samuel de Champlain sent several pairs of Canada geese to France in the early 17th century as a present for King Louis XIII. Introduced birds also live in Japan, Chile, Argentina and the Falkland Islands.

  King James II's waterfowl collection in St James's Park received the birds in the late 17th century. By the middle of the 18th century, Canada geese had established populations in France, Great Britain and Ireland. The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Scandinavia and Finland followed in the 20th century, starting with Sweden in 1929. Most European populations do not migrate, though those in the more northerly parts of Sweden and Finland travel to the North Sea and Baltic coasts. European birds descend mostly from the nominate subspecies B. c. canadensis, probably with some contribution from B. c. maxima.

  Some Canada geese reached Northern Europe on their own, confirmed by ringing recoveries, and these include the subspecies B. c. parvipes. The birds also occur naturally on the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Siberia and in eastern China.

  In 1953, the British Trust for Ornithology estimated the population of the British Isles at 2,670-3,482 birds. The Wildfowl Trust put it at a minimum of 10,090. The geese had arrived in the 17th century as decorative and game birds on country estates and stayed uncommon until the mid-20th century. During the 1970s they began to spread into countryside waters and wetlands. The population reached an estimated 60-64,000 in 1990 and 82,000 in 1999. By 2017, about 165,000 were wintering. Changing agricultural practices and urban growth supplied new habitat.

  An attempt in the 1950s and 1960s to move breeding pairs away from farmland backfired. It created new subpopulations and an overall population explosion. The birds are most concentrated in South East England and the Midlands, and they have spread into moorlands, upland waters and places where people live. Few animals compete with a large aquatic bird of parks and open woodland, and the mute swan is the only significant rival. Reservoirs and flooded gravel pits created good breeding areas, and the introduced birds lost their instinct to migrate.

  Ecologically, Canada geese have driven native ducks and swans from nesting areas through sheer numbers. They overgraze the shoots and rhizomes of aquatic plants, and their droppings contribute to eutrophication in water. Adults have no predators outside humans in Europe. Eggs and goslings, however, are taken by European mink, Eurasian otters and mute swans.

  New Zealand received Canada geese as a game bird in 1905. They have fouled pastures and damaged crops in some areas. The Wildlife Act 1953 protected them, and Fish and Game New Zealand managed the population by culling excessive numbers. In 2011, the government removed the protection status, which allowed anyone to kill the birds.

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• 8. Geese and People

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  In Canada, the goose is considered part of the national identity. Across North America, nonmigratory populations keep rising on golf courses, in parking lots and in urban parks that once saw only the occasional migrant. The species has become one of the most common waterfowl on the continent. Many people now treat resident geese as pests, blaming their droppings, noise, crop damage and confrontational behavior. They are also suspected of raising fecal coliform levels at beaches.

  In 2000, the North American population was estimated at 4 million to 5 million birds. A 20-year study from 1983 to 2003 in Wichita, Kansas, found the city's winter population grew from 1,600 to over 18,000.

  An extended hunting season, noise makers and hazing by dogs have all been tried against suspect flocks. Conservationists would like hunting to target the larger, nuisance-causing nonmigratory populations, rather than migratory flocks showing natural behavior, which may be rarer.

  Since 1999, the United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services agency has carried out lethal culls of Canada geese, mostly in urban or crowded areas. It responds to municipalities and private landowners such as golf courses. Addling eggs and destroying nests are promoted as humane control. Flocks can also be captured while molting, a method used against invasive populations.

  The Migratory Bird Treaty Act in the United States and the Migratory Birds Convention Act in Canada protect the geese outside designated hunting seasons. Both countries mostly prohibit buying and trading them. In the United Kingdom, nests and eggs are fully protected unless removal is specifically licensed. In Ohio, hunting is allowed from the 1st to the 15th of September, with a daily bag limit of five. Permits for destroying nests or rounding up geese can be used from the 11th of March through the 31st of August.

  A threatened goose first stands erect, spreads its wings and hisses. Next it charges, and it may then peck or strike with its wings. Geese are quite wary of humans where they are regularly hunted. Where people feed them, they can lose all fear and grow overly aggressive.

  In 1995, a U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry struck a flock of Canada geese on takeoff at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. The aircraft lost power in both port side engines and crashed 2 miles from the runway, killing all 24 crew members. The accident sparked efforts such as habitat modification, aversion tactics, herding and relocation, and culling of flocks.

  In 2009, a collision with migratory Canada geese left US Airways Flight 1549 without power from both engines after takeoff. The crew ditched the plane in the Hudson River with no loss of human life. The FAA reported 1,772 known civil aircraft strikes within the United States between 1990 and 2018. Total costs to general and commercial aviation have exceeded $130 million. Only turkey vultures cause more damaging bird strikes in the United States.

  Hunters prize the bird, and the U.S. goose harvest for 2013-14 topped 1.3 million. Drake Larsen, a sustainable agriculture researcher at Iowa State University, told The Atlantic that the meat is "yummy...good, lean, rich meat". The British Trust for Ornithology has called them "reputedly amongst the most inedible of birds". Wild goose meat is rarely sold because of regulation and slaughterhouses' lack of experience with wild birds. Geese culled in New York City parks by the city's Department of Environmental Protection have been donated to food banks in Pennsylvania.

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