Later in the afternoon, GEESE OFF! staff reported 300 geese in a large pond directly to our south on the north shore of Long Island.  They had moved on by the next visit in the evening.

Their epic journey from the tundra of the Arctic circle to their wintering grazing lands up and down the eastern sea-board is underway.   Goose control now enters a different cycle with large groups of geese returning to ponds and grazing grounds that have been quiet over the summer.  Long Island, southern Westchester and New Jersey are particularly popular wintering grounds for huge flocks of migrating geese due to the abundance of sheltered bays, reservoirs, lakes and ponds in close proximity to parks, playing fields, golf courses and large lawns.

As people and dogs retire indoors to escape the cold, the GEESE OFF! Border collies and staff will be working on these geese day and night across the autumn and winter to ensure they keep our clients’ properties as goose-free as possible.

To see how these dogs work, please watch the fourth episode of  the GEESE OFF! short video series “In dogged pursuit of geese – How we do it.”  http://www.geeseoff.com/new-york/westchester/geese-videos.php

These geese and their young have been flightless during a one month period in the goose calendar known as the summer molt.  Starting in early June geese shed all their flight feathers.  It takes a full month for them to grow back.  During this time, sound goose control practice is to stop “walk-ins” invading our customers’ ponds or waterways and adjacent lawns.

The combination of lush lawns bordering water is an attractive proposition for land-bound Canada geese during the molt.  They provide food and protection.  The art of good goose control is to prevent them gaining a foot-hold on any property with similar characteristics.   The combined force of swimming dogs or handlers in kayaks in the water with trained Border collies on the land has to be brought to bear day and night.

Canada geese tend to shed their flight feathers at the same time allowing relatives that were unsuccessful in the nesting season to help raise the young in a tight family group.  They also re-grow their feathers at the same time.  This coincides with the maturation of the goslings enabling the whole family group to take off together to seek greener pastures.  However, not all geese start and end the molt at the same time.  Some start in June, others in July.  Nearly all geese are in the air again by mid August.

So what happens now?  Expect geese problems to escalate as large groups of birds leave their water havens (ponds, wetlands, rivers and bays) at dawn.  They will fly to well-manicured, watered lawns nearby.  They will feed for as long as they are allowed, or until the sun becomes uncomfortably hot, at which time they will return to their ponds or waterways.  They will stay in the water until the early evening when they might head out for a quick feed before dark.  On cool, wet days they will stay at their feeding grounds all day – if permitted.

School playing fields and parks are particularly vulnerable as Canada geese emerge from the molt.  This will be the pattern across the second half of July (the hottest two weeks of the year) and through the dog days of August.  Speaking of dogs, you’ll be seeing more of the GEESE OFF! Border collies.

Katherine Dattoma, a leading agility trainer in the area, was invited by the Town to help with their Border collies in 2010.  She studied the dogs.  She also interviewed the handlers and states she was “was able to evaluate the dog/handler interactions at the shelter and at many of the working locations.”

What she found disturbed her. 

“The handlers were not provided with even the basics of dog training,” she said.   “Novice dogs were paired with novice handlers and then expected to perform off-leash work in public places!”

She believed that the handlers “were unequipped to handle the major problems exhibited by the Border collies.” 

She presented the facts and findings in her report to Town staff last year.  Her primary recommendation was to house the three dogs with their handlers rather than in the stressful environment of an animal shelter, advice that went unheeded.    

So Ms. Dattoma took the opportunity of presenting her case directly to Supervisor Venditto at a recent Town meeting that was open to the public.  After introducing herself, she went straight to the heart of the issue by informing the meeting that “all three dogs had behavioral problems that interfered with their ability to perform their jobs in a safe and efficient manner.”

She continued: “The dogs are unable to focus for a training session and enter their work environment in a state of over-arousal.”  

“One runs away chasing squirrels,” she added, “another kills geese, and a third violently attacks the glass windows of the truck.”

She analyzed each individual dog.  First Xena:

“Xena loves to play ball with her handler,” she stated.  “Xena doesn’t like to chase geese.  She’s extremely reactive towards any movements outside the truck while being transported.”

She went on to describe the second dog, Abbey.

“Abbey runs away,” she told the audience.

Her professional opinion is that “a Border collie (that’s) properly bonded with its handler almost never runs away.”

 She continued: “Sometimes Abbey will chase the geese.  Sometimes she comes when called, sometimes she disappears into the woods wasting hours of working time.”

For a dog brought in under guidance from GeesePeace (an animal rights organization), the third dog, Skye is even more of a liability.  Ms Dattoma’s words were brief and blunt:

“Skye loves to chase geese.  She also loves to kill geese.”

Ms. Dattoma cataloged a list of problems displayed by Skye as she attempted to do the job of clearing geese in a safe, humane manner:

“She doesn’t take direction from her handler, has no recall, no release, no ‘down’ at a distance – her handler has no control over her actions with the geese.”

If the behavioral issues of these unfortunate dogs look like an accident waiting to happen, we’re too late.  In 2008 the New York State Bar Association recorded the following details from a court case:

“A jogger in a park located in the Village of Massapequa Park and the Town of Oyster Bay was bitten on the abdomen by a Border collie named Zeke, who was part of the GeesePeace program designed to scare Canada geese from public parks.”  The dog was on an extendable leash with a novice handler.

In conclusion, what do we have here?  One Border collie in the Town of Oyster Bay/GeesePeace program that manages to bite a jogger while its novice handler fails to control it on an extendable leash; another Town dog that wants to play ball rather than work; a different Town dog that runs away rather than chase geese; and a fourth Town dog that loves to kill geese? 

There’s an unfortunate pattern here.

Last Saturday (October 2), we saw the season’s first flock of migrant geese flying high over the sodden wasteland of Putnam County.  The leaves have turned early in protest at the recent end to the summer’s scorched earth drought and we’ve just lit our first fire of the season in GEESE OFF! headquarters.  These changes in the air mean that our goose control Border collies are about to get busy – very busy.

Experts believe migratory Canada geese have had a good breeding season in the northern tundra.  They’re now on their way south with their young in their slip-stream.

This land is our land

Suburban development and wholesale re-forestation on the eastern seaboard (the northeast in particular) has led to less arable farm-land.  This has squeezed Canada geese on the Atlantic fly-way into less space.  The result has been more and more geese ending their journeys around the New York metro area.  They feed on recently-installed, irrigated playing fields on schools and public parks where the quality of grass is higher than before and the hunter’s rifle absent.

Canada geese are also attracted to the larger, lusher lawns so conveniently located in the upscale suburbs of Long Island’s Gold Coast and along the northern shore of Long Island Sound.  They have even been seen as urban vandals in New York’s public parks from Central Park to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.  The Department of Agriculture, in partnership with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the city’s Mayor, Michael Blomberg have agreed a seven mile exclusion zone around JFK and LaGuardia where resident geese are to be culled every year in the summer molt.

There are two small problems with this plan.

1.      Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, where some 400 geese were rounded up and slaughtered last summer, is outside the seven mile killing zone

2.      They cannot catch and kill the migrant geese that downed Sully’s plane in the Hudson.

A rounding error

Round-ups, culls and killings scratch at the region’s goose problems.  Requiring a shift in public taste and opinion, the solutions are easy to see, yet fairly difficult to execute.  Firstly,  we have to lose our infatuation with heavily watered and manicured lawns in favor of more ground cover plants, shrubs and trees.  This will drive geese back inland to parkway verges and winter grazing areas.  It will also keep them longer in the wetlands, bays and inlets where they will have to re-learn how to feed on secondary quality forage and aquatic plants – their staple diet before the advent of excessive fertilization and irrigation.

Secondly, more property owners will have to use companies like GEESE OFF! to move the birds away and keep them away from areas of conflict.  As we have done for many clients in the tristate region over the last eight years, we can undertake this form of humane goose control effectively.

See our video series “In Dogged Pursuit of Geese” for an analysis of geese problems and a view of our Border Collies at work on http://www.geeseoff.com/new-york/westchester/geese-videos.php

This is nature at work, keeping the different species in balance.

Last week, we received numerous cries for help. Two calls came within an hour of each other from desperate householders. Over one hundred geese had turned up out of the blue a week before to foul their properties. One of the callers hadn’t seen a goose on her property in seventeen years. We also received calls from another two Long Island-based organizations wanting urgent solutions to their geese problems. See http://geeseoff.com/new-york/westchester/goose-control.php. The deals were concluded within a few hours resulting in two more new customers for GEESE OFF!

Across the island people are reporting many more geese than usual – more flocks, larger flocks. GEESE OFF! is still fighting a sizable migrant flock of some 300 geese in Mill Neck on the north shore of Long Island. These birds come from northern Quebec. They spend every winter in and around Lattingtown, Mill Neck Bay, Oyster Bay and Centre Island.

Collared geese

How do we know where they’re from? Simple – for the last six years we’ve been seeing some of this flock wearing peach-colored neck collars with large white numbers on them. We jot down the numbers and dial them into a special phone line for the US Fish & Wildlife Services department that deals with migratory bird counts. A few weeks later, we receive a certificate telling us where the geese were banded. The certificate gives the birds’ sex, their age and the name of the wildlife biologist responsible for the banding. The man who bands the Mill Neck geese is a Québécois. He captures and collars the birds up in the tundra during the summer molt when they cannot fly. All in all, we see about fifty geese with his collars.

Exodus

But why have these Long Island geese been so numerous and so persistent over the last two weeks? As mentioned in our previous blog, http://geeseoff.com/geesecontrolblog/border-collies/goose-control-in-new-york-snowstorms-feb-27-2010/, the geese on Long Island lost a lot of valuable feeding time during the snow storms that blanketed the island in February. They’re battling to rebuild their body fat in preparation for their long migrations. Meanwhile, female resident geese are also restocking their larders in order to have enough in store for the 28 days they will spend incubating their eggs in April. They will eat little when they sit on the nest.

Spring relief

March 21, the first day of spring, will dawn a different day. Year after year, we’ve seen dramatic declines in the number of geese on Long Island around that date. Up in Westchester and Putnam Counties, we already noted flocks of twenty to fifty geese flying high on the back of last week’s southerly breezes before the weekend rain storms grounded the flights. More birds will soon follow. At the same time, many nesting resident geese have already returned to their home ponds to begin the nesting process.

Throughout last week we fought hard skirmishes with ravenous geese right across the Tristate region – but Long Island’s Nassau County was the epicenter of the battle. Then, a powerful “HUZZARD” (hurricane/blizzard) hit New York on Thursday and Friday, February 25-26.  The geese had felt its approach early. For two or three days we had been clearing large flocks from many of our customers’ properties. Hardest hit were the expansive, manicured lawns on the elegant estates that sweep down to the bay in Mill Neck on the north shore of Long Island. The day before this latest version of “SNOWMAGEDDON” hit, we went to one waterfront estate five times; five times we cleared geese.

This persistence is unusual, except either side of major snowstorms. When geese know they are not going to have access to grass for days, they throw caution to the wind with attack after attack on favored foraging grounds – especially when they don’t have to expend much energy in just gliding back to water below.

Help. Get rid of our geese!

In the seven years that GEESE OFF! has been working in goose control, we’ve always found this to be the busiest time of year. Canada geese are voracious eaters – see http://geeseoff.com/new-york/westchester/geese-problems.php. The average adult can eat 3 lbs of grass each day. In winter that’s not easy to do – especially when snow covers the ground for days on end. Canada geese know they need the nutrients because they are about to begin another journey in their circle of life:

1. Pairs of local resident geese are already starting to return to their home ponds and nesting sites. Because they favor promontories and islands on or adjacent to water, competition for the best sites is fierce. The dominant pairs bring along their hatchlings from the previous two years that are still too young to have paired up. They help their parents protect their chosen sites. At this time of year, many a person tells us: “We’re being kept awake by these damned geese squawking in the pond all through the night.”

2. Non-resident geese from the frozen interior will also start going home to reclaim their nesting sites. These Canada geese are not true migrants. They just spend the winters around the Long Island Sound where there is always unfrozen water to be found for overnight roosting sites.

3. In mid-March, migrant Canada geese will begin their arduous flight back to the Arctic Circle for their late spring nesting season.

All this activity requires energy. Goose energy comes from grass.  So, these major snow events with the ridiculous names mean the geese just have to be so much more aggressive in foraging when they have the opportunity to do so.

With snow on the ground, they have to wait out the crisis. They will expend as little energy as possible by sitting in sheltered ponds and inlets, necks tucked in to the warmth of their bodies. After a couple of days, a few wily family groups will go out to check for exposed grass. As soon as they find the odd tuft here or there, they pounce. Others quickly follow. Within a few minutes, over one hundred geese can hit a fairly small stretch of grass.

When the snow melts and people venture outdoors, many a property owner will be staring in disbelief at the grass mounds, south-facing slopes and areas under trees that are first exposed by the sun or wind. The grass will have been scalped to the roots by the ravenous geese. What hasn’t been scalped will have been covered by mounds of goose droppings.

They will have seen with their own eyes how much damage can be done by large bands of roving geese desperate for sustenance either side of APOCALYPSE SNOW. Goose control companies will be dealing with this until the middle of March. Then we will face a whole new set of goose problems – spring nesting season!

For more information on Canada geese problems and means of effective goose control go to: http://geeseoff.com/index.php