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<\/p>\n\u201cSo that moulting period for geese is kind of right about now until into August,\u201d said Ryan Fisher, curator of vertebrate zoology at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.<\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that moulting season for the geese is usually about a month, maybe a little bit longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canada geese are unusual because they lose all of their flight feathers at once.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo geese and ducks are the only types of birds that do that; they\u2019re not able to fly at certain times of year,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cOther types of birds do moult, but they sort of moult one feather at a time so that they can still fly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got adults who are replacing some of their feathers, and then you\u2019ve got these young ones who are growing their new feathers, and none of them are able to fly right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Losing the option of flying away also changes how geese react to people.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think their usual strategy when they\u2019re able to fly, they would probably just run and fly away from you, but they\u2019re not able to do that right now,\u201d Fisher said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo they are a little bit more aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMom and dad are also just a little bit more aggressive as well, because they want to make sure that those goslings survive and leave to migrate in the fall.\u201d<\/p>\n
For anyone sharing a trail with them, Fisher said the solution is simple.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy advice is always to give them a wide, wide berth and, you know, just sort of go around a big, big flock like that if you can,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
If walking around them isn\u2019t possible, \u201ctry not to get in between mom and dad and the goslings.\u201d<\/p>\n
The larger flocks showing up in parks and near lakes aren\u2019t a coincidence either.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re one Canada goose and you can\u2019t fly, it\u2019s probably better to be in a big flock to have other eyes looking out for predators and things like that,\u201d Fisher said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so they do tend to aggregate together, kind of form into larger groups when they\u2019re moulting.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Fisher puts it: \u201cSafety in numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even wildlife experts know better than to push their luck.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been lucky and I haven\u2019t been attacked, but they will definitely hiss, and they\u2019ll kind of spread their wings out to make themselves look big,\u201d Fisher said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn those cases, it\u2019s sort of a matter of trying to get out of there as quick as you can so that you don\u2019t stress the bird out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA wide berth when you\u2019re walking is always the best idea in my experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canada geese are protected under federal migratory bird legislation, meaning people cannot intentionally harass them or disturb their nests or eggs, though simply walking through a park isn\u2019t a problem.<\/p>\n
Those summertime goose traffic jams won\u2019t last forever. Once their new feathers have grown in, the birds begin fueling up for migration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll start to fuel up, so they\u2019ll be eating a lot, eating a lot of grass, a lot of seeds and things like that,\u201d Fisher said.<\/p>\n
Later in September, many Canada geese begin heading south, although some remain in Saskatchewan until colder weather arrives.<\/p>\n
Fisher hopes people remember there\u2019s more to Canada\u2019s iconic bird than its noisy reputation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know people aren\u2019t necessarily always happy all the time with all the geese in cities, but they are actually kind of a neat conservation story,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo Canada geese were actually once endangered.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Natural Resources Canada, there are now an estimated seven million Canada geese across North America. Most regional surveys show populations are stable or increasing, and geese have returned to many parts of southern Canada where they were once considered completely wiped out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were very few of them in Prairie Canada, and through lots of efforts, they\u2019ve rebounded spectacularly and are doing quite well now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s kind of one of those neat stories where conservation was actually really, really successful for Canada geese.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Kenneth.Cheung@pattisonmedia.com <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSo that moulting period for geese is kind of right about now until into August,\u201d said Ryan Fisher,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":815752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-815751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/815752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}