May 22, 2007
Urbanland Who's Who: The Canada Goose
The Canada Goose Branta Canadensis is a native North American species of waterfowl. There are up to 11 subspecies of the Canada Goose, but they all have handsome markings—black head, white cheek patches, and long black neck—and fly together in a "V" formation when migrating.
That is, if they migrate: Another characteristic of the Canada Goose is that it has no problem living near humans. In fact, they find urban areas like Toronto an ideal place to settle down because they're protected from most predators (except coyotes and loose dogs) and food is plentiful in the form of lawns and garbage. Heck, people even bring them bagels and bread. If you had such a sweet deal, you'd chuck the whole migrating business, too.
Which means that the urban Canada Geese population is growing fast. In fact, the city now considers them a nuisance bird. A single goose can produce a pound of poop a day. These droppings ruin parkland and contaminate water (waterfowl have been blamed for the closings of five city beaches). Last year, Council approved new measures and the expansion of existing programs to better manage gulls, ducks and geese that are polluting city parks—specifically Centre Island Beach and Bluffer's Park Beach. Techniques used to discourage geese from taking up year-long residency include habitat modification, the oiling of eggs to prevent hatching, and the use of trained dogs and falcons (to chase away flocks). But the simplest way keep Canada Geese at bay is to encourage citizens to stop feeding them. No goose in the city is starving, that's why there are so many of them. You are not doing them any favours by giving them day-old bagels—in fact over-population leads to crowding and disease—their nasty bird turds contaminate the water they drink, too.
Another problem associated with the urban geese population is aggressive behaviour toward humans. As we have reported in the past, April to June is the season when the Canada Goose population becomes downright mean. They are a fiercely familial bird and will stop at nothing to protect their eggs until after they have hatched and the little goslings learn to fly at the end of June. How aggressive are they? Well, on May 13th, a family of Canada Geese brought the 401 to a halt as they tried to cross the highway. Canada Geese are big birds and have been known to inflict some nasty injuries such as bites and broken legs, so to survive a goose attack, give them plenty of space and if one comes at you, run away.
Photo by syncros from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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The end of this article reminds me of a similar story about a man who recently moved into a new housing development north of the city only to find a beaver dam flooding his front lawn.
The man destroyed the beaver dam only to find it had been rebuilt several days later. This happened FIVE times over the period of several weeks, with the dam being rebuilt several days later. A few weeks ago the man was on his way to work when he found a huge beaver standing in the middle of his driveway staring him in the face.
Being nocturnal and generally afraid of humans, the man was shocked at the animals behavior. After a few minutes the beaver slowly walked away, periodically looking back to stare at two legged newcomer.
The person who told me this story said the man actually followed the beaver to his dam and spoke to him out loud, assuring the beaver that he would leave it's family's dam alone and that the dam would now be considered a neighbour and not a nuisance, and he has it all on video.
Um, Shaunpierre, I think you just violated one or more laws of the Internet by not providing a YouTube link to said video.
geez, the birds seemed so calm when i went up to them and kneeled down for some photos. They barely looked up at me as i put my camera within a foot of them. I wasn't feeding them, they seemed to be eating the grass.
I've never had any geese attack me, just honk. I'll be a bit more careful putting my tasty fingers in their chomping range next time. The things you do to Get The Picture!
A goose once bit my brother's foot, I was there, I saw it. We were walking from the McDonald's to the Ikea store in North York. It was before the Canadian Tire was built, and I think the geese just saw their habitat threatened or something.
I was walking through the closed kiddie land at centre island when a monster goose came at me hissing .. That thing was the size of a wolf!
When I lived at Seneca's Newnham residence I'd have to cut across the campus to get just about anywhere. I remember the hill used to be covered with goose shit all the time, it was like walking through a minefield designed to make you slip and slide through other mines.
I have to wonder if there's a similar policy for those other avian nuisances, pigeons.
We humans act all tough and top-of-the-food-chain, but if there's anything that'll make a grown man run shrieking like a little girl, it's a charging, bleating Canada Goose. Those things are the gangsters of the avian animal kingdom—one of the few animals that will actually aggressively engage a human without blinking a beady little eye...
Cool photo and cool story. PBS recently had a special featuring Cnadain Geese...amazing footage.
But, the story (comment) about the beaver was priceless.
Only in Canada...someone in Americ-uh would drop a bomb on their own house before reaching an agreement with an animal..reminds of those old Warner Bros. cartoons, where the cat literally destroys his house to try and get rid of a mouse.
That's Americ-uh, baby! Negotiate? Reason? Compromise? Diplomacy?
Never!!!
I'm not worried about goose-on-human violence and I don't consider them pests (although their mammoth poops on lawns and parks can be gross). I am worried about the geese though.
Wild animals are not pets and they should not be treated as such. When people feed wild animals they are slowly domesticated and are eventually reduced to scavengers, relying on handouts from humans to survive. Sure we're all used to pigeons in the parks, but as the process continues with other animals, we have Grizzly Bears living off the waste in garbage dumps instead of functioning as healthy members of their natural ecosystem.
Don't feed wild animals! It's not cute, it's sad.