[EBB Sightings] Too many?

Alan Howe wrote:

> I was taken aback at the number of Canadas; is it just me or is there
> a population problem?  Is there something that can/should be done to
> try to help keep the numbers at a more healthy-seeming level (like,
> say, at Berkeley Aquatic Park)?

Yes, there are too many Canada geese at Lake Merritt - but it's at least
partly an artifact of the season. The word is out in goose-land, and it
looks like every third goose in Northern California shows up at Lake
Merritt for the molt. (And why not - perfect safety, lotsa company, and
a nice human with a bucket of grain every afternoon at 3:30?) The rest
of the year, you'd still see some geese, but not nearly so many.

These geese have routine "molt migration" patterns, in addition to the
main breeding forrays. When I was up in Churchill, Manitoba, a couple of
weeks ago - birding Elderhostel to the sub-Arctic spring, whoo-ha - a
lot of the great big inland plains geese were coming in just to hang out
on the tundra and molt. There's a smaller Hudson Bay race that breeds
there, but the guide assured us that these guys don't; they raise their
families elsewhere but like the relative safety and food supply around
Churchill for their flightless time well enough to travel hundreds and
hundreds of miles for it. We did a census one day, counting more than
500 Canada geese in the course of our travels - more than twice as many
as the next most populous species.


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