Nov. 21, 2009
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I may have to proclaim Tuesday as the Day of the Goose.
Clive and I had been trying for some time to get together at the pond near the Birds of Prey Centre across the street from his Coaldale house. For the past while, he had been marvelling at the thousands of Canada Geese spending the day on the pond. They’d feed in the morning in area fields then entertain the neighbourhood as they whiffled in the wind to drop for a graceful landing on the thin ice or open water.
The wind and light were about right Tuesday, the temperature unseasonably high. For an hour and a half, we watched near the shore, trying to move only when we hoisted cameras to capture the air show.
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They weren’t being particularly co-operative, generally landing beyond camera range. We’d shoot anyway. The occasional group would fly tantalizingly in our direction, but still just out of reach for a tightly-framed shot. |
In the end, we got some decent photos when they took off en masse past us.
Landing, taking off, or just paddling across the water, they’re an awesome sight. They can reach 122 cm (four feet) in length with a 178-cm (six-foot) wingspan. Some weigh up to 8 kg (20 pounds.) They mate for life and often return to the same nest each year.
When you see the vast numbers now in parks and golf courses near lakes, in fields where mechanical harvesting has left more than enough food for them, and in the sky in their familiar drafting V formation, you’d have trouble believing they had all but disappeared from the area a bit more than 100 years ago.
Conservation efforts had brought their numbers back to about 1 million in North America In the 1950s. Now, the Canada Goose population has grown to an estimated 8 million, “one of the great success stories of wildlife management today,” concludes Hinterland Who’s Who. It is on the Least Concern list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature that includes 10,000 scientists and experts from 83 countries.
They’re common in large numbers on Henderson Lake, as they were Tuesday as I returned from Coaldale. If you’re still, they will bob close enough to capture some detail in their feather markings.
Later, a friend told me of concerns he’d heard expressed about the number of geese on the Nobleford reservoir and that a resident had urged someone should scare them off until they’re gone.
And that evening, geese honked on an instrumental called Estuarine Marsh in Late Winter being played on Galaxie Nature.
To some, geese are a nuisance, to others a game bird they can hunt until mid-December.
For the rest of us, they remain just part of the landscape.
Or wildlife worth watching from the time they hatch in spring through a Southern Alberta winter.