How our past experiences influence our assumptions (geese)

I grew up in southwestern Ontario and not surprisingly, that biased my view on birds and their movements and populations in the province. I don't think there is a better example of this than my view of goose migration.

For most of my life, I thought seeing several hundred or even a thousand Canada Geese was a good flock. And sure enough, scrutiny of any "good-sized" flock (read: a few hundred) in my neck of the woods has a pretty good shot at turning up "something good", usually Cackling or Snow Geese or maybe if you're really lucky a Greater White-fronted or Ross's.

Big or small flock? Depends on where you're from! Spot the Cacklers?

My eyes were opened when I started hanging around this girl, Erica and her family's farm southeast of Ottawa. Turns out what I thought was a lot of geese was pretty sad. Not a day goes by in far southeastern Ontario during migration season when you can't easily find tens of thousands of geese in the air or in the farm fields.

My view of Ontario goose migration, like so many other southern Ontario-centric birders, was extremely flawed. Southeastern Ontario is on a huge goose flyway along the Atlantic coast. In recent years, as the Greater Snow Goose migration has increased in southeastern Ontario, awareness of this seems to be increasing, but still most Ontario birders really don't appreciate how different goose migration is in the southeast.

Greater Snow Geese near Cornwall

This really revealed itself to me while on the OBRC and the committee was discussing a record of Barnacle Geese outside of Ottawa. In short, I am of the belief that Barnacle Goose occurs as a natural vagrant in this part of the province but some people, largely because of their southwestern Ontario view of goose migration, disagree. So, I decided to compile some information...that spiraled a bit out of control and before I knew it I had a decent article for Ontario Birds.

Anyways, this is all to say that I am happy with an article I recently wrote for Ontario Birds. Here are a couple of figures to get you thinking:

Canada Geese banded in Greenland and recovered or re-sighted in Canada and the United States. Prepared using data obtained from the Canadian Wildlife Service Bird Banding Office.

You might notice a similarity with this:

Barnacle Goose reports in eBird for northeast US and Canada.

If you're an OFO member check out the article in the December issue of Ontario Birds. If you're not...why not? (email me and I can send a pdf)

Looking forward to hearing your feedback on this one!

A gaggle of geese!

Every spring and fall hundreds of thousands of Snow and Canada Geese pass through easternmost Ontario on their migrations between the Arctic and the east coast. The sights can be dizzying with so many geese in the air, especially for southern Ontarians who think a flock of a couple thousand Canadas is a big one!

This spectacle has made headlines in Ontario this month because Jacques Bouvier found a Pink-footed Goose in a large flock of Greater Snow Geese near Moose Creek. This, being the first record for Ontario, has obviously created lots of attention on these amazing flocks of birds. Even without this rarity it is well worth the trip in spring or fall to witness all of the geese in eastern Ontario and western Quebec.

I have visited the area twice over the past month (helps to have inlaws in the area!!) and captured some images that give you a bit of a feel for the huge numbers, but to really do it justice you'll have to check it out yourself!

If you really want to do this one justice, open it up in your browser (click here) and then zoom in to see it at full size! PS: there is a Greater White-fronted Goose in that image somewhere...

Immature Greater White-fronted Goose

On a more recent visit, I checked the Moose Creek Sewage Lagoons and was happy to find a neck-collared Snow Goose. This is my third I have found in this general area. The other two were both banded on Bylot Island (where most "Greater" Snow Geese breed). Here's the collared goose I found this time:

I submitted the information to the Bird Banding lab (so that they and the bander have the information about where the bird has been re-sighted) and got back this information:

As you can see, this bird was also banded on Bylot Island, this time in 2013. By my calculations it has flown at least 22,000 km in it's life, probably much further!

I also found a nice big flock of Canada Geese closer to Morrisburg:

After a bit of searching I found two Cackling Geese mixed in! Did you see them in the above photo?? Here they are:

Still can't see them in the big image? Here, I have marked their location:

Always fun sifting through these huge flocks!!!