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News from Bird Bottom Farm
Those Honking Heralds of Spring
By Ursula B.G. Kilner, Salisbury
As spring arrives (and we seem to have spring arriving almost weekly since fall) the sight and sound of geese in their flight overhead makes us wonder if these are the same geese which migrated south. There has been a large increase in the number of geese over the past few years, prompting some human engineers of nature to say we should kill off so many thousand geese to reduce their number to "normal." What constitutes "normal" in nature is, I fear, something we will never know, as it would require counting geese over several thousand years—and few, if any, humans that I have heard of manage that kind of life span.
The geese we see and hear at Bird Bottom Farm generally make their home at Washanee Lake (known to the non-Indian speakers as the western Twin Lake). The geese we know are mostly Canada geese. As "our" geese have toothed or serrated bills, they are able to eat all kinds of grasses and other vegetable growth; unlike many other large birds, they do not depend on fish for their livelihood. Now, I got into a discussion with a bird expert about whether, when the winter is relatively warm, "our" geese stay here or fly south, and also whether the geese which are ordinarily in Canada for the winter stay in Canada or fly south despite the milder temperatures. (As there are thousands of geese, would it be possible for even the most avid bird watcher—even financed by the generous U.S. government—to count each goose and tabulate its migrating pattern?)
As Canada geese mate for life, when one is injured the other will stay with its mate. I have read of a woman in North Carolina who cares for geese, and she notes that when one goose is unable to fly the other will not leave its mate. She apparently has hundreds of such injured geese with healthy mates. Many of the geese have been "winged" by hunters but not killed. I cannot say from personal experience how a Canada goose tastes properly roasted, but I have read that they are on the tough side; as one who enjoys watching the geese in their daily flight, I would rather see them honking by in their neat "V" forms than sitting roasted on the dinner table.
One thing about the Canada geese is that mother is the goose and the father the gander, and the offspring (hmm, the hatched egg) is the gosling. They stay together as a family until they have migrated, and then the gosling will mate. Canada geese live as long as 40 years. They have been watched and counted for many years; still, since there are so many thousands, how can a person be sure of the numbers in whole great flocks? Some have been tagged and watched, and some of the tagged geese are never found again. It is truly a job of statistics. If a goose and gander have the average family of four eggs and each lives (not all of them will, of course, in every family), the number of geese produced in a year would be staggering.
I think the great gift the Canada geese give us is the honking and the neatly aligned "V" forms as they fly overhead. At the end of an average winter (which this past one was not), the sound of the honking of the Canada geese marks the beginning of spring as much as the robins on the lawn and the red-winged blackbirds coming to the feeders from the nearby swamp.
The Canada geese are related to ducks but more closely related to swans. Geese have larger heads, shorter necks and longer legs. If you cannot tell a swan from a Canada goose, you haven't watched many birds, but maybe this is the time to start watching, as spring is upon us and the migrating birds (like the Canada geese) are returning.
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