Canada geese beat humans in longstanding territory battle: study | Hacker News Reader

Canada geese beat humans in longstanding territory battle: study

aces.illinois.edu

35 pointshhs45 comments

> “I thought using these Fitbit-like devices on the neck collar was a creative way to understand resting, flying, or foraging behaviors. And when Ryan was doing all this physical work to figure out what this accelerometry data would tell us, I was very eager to see what the results were,” Ward says. “But when it was all analyzed, I was like, ‘Wow, that's not too exciting.’ Basically, when you harass, they fly a little bit more because you're scaring them, or they might be alert a little more, but it wasn't a fundamental difference.”

Well, that’s one way for a PI to publicly skewer their former grad student.

The article behind the press release: https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ws...

Canadian Geese regiments were one of the principal tactics British and Colonial forces used to protect Upper Canada in the War of 1812. Sadly, the geese never were able to adjust to civilian life and now are just real jerks.

Just hope they never link up with the Emus after their decisive victory in 1932.

First Emus and now Geese. It’s becoming increasingly clear that birds are the real geopolitical threat to the western led world order

It is their ecological niche to live in crowded parks where there are lots of people and other Canada geese around. They are the bird which is most tolerant of harassment of all birds.

Their ecological niche is to live in places with short grasses (easy to notice predators), near water. The natural predator of adults is wolves and coyotes. Their natural response to a threat isn't to run, but to mob up and threaten back.

As a society, we love living near water and build water features. We prefer to have grasses trimmed short. Wolves and coyotes generally avoid the kinds of places we live in (though some coyotes are getting closer). We back down when a goose threatens us back, and learn to give them space.

In short, our behaviour has created an ideal environment for the Canada Goose.

It's a bit mean, but i believe that sealing the eggs (with olive oil or some other equivalent air-blocking grease) in a clutch without disturbing the nest does "work": the egg dies, the geese will continue to attempt to hatch them and miss a breeding window.

bother-the-geese-dogs seem less effective.

I know one man whose property was overrun with Canadian geese. So for several seasons, he and his friend would go over the property and while one of them would use a rake and a garbage can lid for protection would push the geese away from their nests while the other would simply kick the eggs away from the nest. This was enough to reduce the population to just 1 or 2% of its original number over a few years.

I think we just need persistent, automated harassers. I'd imagine they would learn to not come to a park if every time they landed, they were chased off by a drone within a minute. Whereas just chasing them off with a car once and letting them return just teaches them to avoid the car.

If I had to choose between listening to a bunch of geese minding their own business and a buzzy drone, I'd choose the geese.

I tolerate geese because every spring small fuzzy babies show up and it's adorable to watch them waddle around

Our itinerant Canadian geese have an annual ritual:

  - Nest in the favorite spot
  - Chase off the other ducks and geese who come to visit
  - Hatch 6-7 fuzzy babies
  - Parade the babies around for a few days
  - Lead the babies to the coyotes (coywolves) waiting at the treeline
  - Depart for ten months, repeat

Sounds about right, but you missed biting and honking at random shiny car bumpers all day and dive-bombing people on their daily walk.

And carpeting everything with an even layer of poop

Wait, what? Can you elaborate on the part about the coyotes?

You're saying they have an annual ritual of infanticide? That's. Horrifying. I wonder if this particular flock suffered some kind of trauma.

Nothing so complicated. The geese are just compelled by nature to walk into the woods with their goslings shortly after hatching. And coyotes have their own habits, of course.

There's a reason geese lay so many eggs. If they all survived, the population would quadruple every year.

The average Canada goose lives for about 20 years in the wild, so if you think about it... for population to remain steady, more than 99% of goslings have to die.

Still, every year I root for the goslings. Coyotes have plenty of other things to eat. None so convenient and tasty, perhaps.

Bizarre! Thanks for elaborating.

Predation and parasitism are both so fascinating.

Very interesting. We had woods around my geese's nesting area. I'm not sure if we had coyotes (wouldn't be surprised if I never saw them). We did have ponds with the occasional alligator. That might be enough to thin the flock.

I don't know about coywolves, but if you live near coyotes, you'll hear them if you don't see them.

so much poop in the grass though

Something that benefits all parties then: automated goose poop removers.

I don't think you appreciate just how much poop we are talking about. One example, Coyote Point is a huge park near San Francisco. Massively large grass fields and hills etc. Very beautiful but the fields are largely unusable because every square inch of grass is covered in goose poop. The playgrounds and the CuriOddyssey museum are cool though, so still worth a visit with the kiddos.

thats fertilizer

The drones would probably be very active initially, and then rarely once the geese have learned that if they land they will be harassed. Other than safety situations at airports though, it seems more cruel than anything to drive them off. The article implies that it's to get them to migrate to warmer areas, but will they actually do this?

Or, like how ravens were introduced to control the pigeon population in US cities and now we have both, we’d just end up perpetually with both drones buzzing about AND geese.

Also the fact that Canadian geese are smart and aggressive means it’s only a matter of time before they realize they can likely break the drones

So long as they don't mate with the drones and create buzzing, honking offspring.

Humans first damage or appropriate much of their natural habitat, then build parks that are pretty appealing to geese (lots of grass to eat, bodies of water, long sight lines), then get upset that the parks are full of geese.

I think I'm going to have to take the side of the geese here.

A vast majority of land is wild and not manicured by humans. They can find another spot. Just like we don't need to let bears root through garbage cans.

Bears are dangerous. Despite internet memes about goose aggression, they weigh 8 pounds and have hollow bones; geese are not dangerous.

Even if they weren't, you aren't doing the any favors by providing free or easy food in an unnatural manner(like huge manicured park lawns, artificial lakes, etc)

This feels like a covert commentary on homeless humans.

You know its summertime in Canada when those @#$#$# start honking at 5 am in the morning.

By "Canada geese" do they mean cobra chickens?

As a Canadian, I can say that geese are scary

No luck catching them geese then?

If you've got a problem with Canada gooses, you've got a problem with me, and I suggest you let that one marinate.

Better simmer down now there, eh?

You can meet all kinds of people on HN, but I never thought I would meet a Canadian goose

You didn't meet just 1, you've met many Canadian gooses

Never heard of marinading gooses but I guess every area had its own interesting foods

Take about 20% off there, bud.

What if someone only has a problem with your plural of goose?

Mike Tyson had a pretty good run of things, and you wanna know why? No Canada gooses in his weight class.

The geese have more "lust for life" than the majority of Canadians.

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