Creature Feature: Canada Goose

Early morning when the sun is rising, roosters don’t wake me up; Canada Geese do. Now that I’m in Waterloo, the geese population around here is huge. You are bound to step on some geese manure, which is digested grass, on the sidewalk. And every morning, I hear the geese make annoying noises to wake me up before my alarm clock does. Puissance is GGed every morning. They make noise because they are greeting each other and are possibly excited about the sun shining. Nevertheless, their vocal communication system seems to work quite well for them.

Canada Geese have a high tolerance for people and they observe humans all the time. Like pigeons, geese are protected from predators in urban surroundings. They are very well organized and are intelligent birds. Normally, when feeding on grass, there will be one or several geese watching for dangers and the role switches later. In addition, they fly in their signature v-shape when migrating for the winter. In the Spring, they mate and have goslings, which are little yellow things that run around. They are a cute bunch until they grow big and communicate with no manners. While the female incubate the eggs, the male will attack any intruders. Try it sometime at your own risk. Don’t hurt those poor things though.

In conclusion, these large and loud birds are cool to watch, but when you need to sleep, they aren’t too cool anymore.

Photo: Dick Lund
Sources: http://www.gpnc.org/canada.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_goose
http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=35