Wanderers and Homebodies

The first of Connnecticut's waterfowl seasons opened even as utility crews were restoring power and communications in the wake of Hurricane Irene. The special September season north of Interstate 95 for Canada geese began September 1 and 2, then closed until September 6, after which it remains open until September 30. South of Interstate 95, the season runs from September 15 to September 30. During the September seasons, the daily bag limit is high, at 15 geese per hunter, quite a load if you have to carry it back from the field. Later in the fall, the goose season reopens with a smaller legal daily take.

The high bag limit for September is a management tool designed to control the multitudinous numbers of resident geese before other geese migrating from their breeding grounds in Northern Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador pass through the state. Resident geese are homebodies, their inherent wanderlust stifled by cushy living on golf courses and cornfields. Geese that still migrate retain the wild urge to fly far and fast between breeding and wintering grounds. Migrant geese, less populous by far than residents and dependent on environmentally fragile tundra for nesting, generally start moving through in early October, their numbers peaking in mid-December and dwindling through January. Limits and hunting regulations in different areas of Connecticut are tuned to put the most harvest pressure on resident geese, especially where they create a nuisance.

Within the lifetime of many Connecticut citizens, migrant geese were the only Canadas most people in these parts ever saw -- and then only as dots against the sky in a high-flying wedge with an apex directed south. Canadas were so rare a sight that the first time I spotted a wedge far above -- in the early 1950s -- I thought it was a formation of Soviet aircraft descending on Waterbury, a Connecticut Red Dawn if you will. At age 13, I had joined the Ground Observer Corps, a civil defense organization of volunteer spotters who identified and tracked aircraft passing overhead and reported in to a nationwide network. For our efforts, we received a small pair of pin-on wings and the satisfaction of knowing we were helping protect our nation against the Red Menace. My post was in the tower of the Waterbury City Hall, from which I reported by a dedicated telephone line to a central communications center, in New Haven if I remember correctly. One late afternoon in October, I watched the sky to see a formation of flying objects, high up, cresting the hills on the northern horizon. I reached for the phone, ready to report what my immediate reaction told me was a large formation of aircraft piloted by Russians. Fortunately, before I made the call, I noticed that the wings of the planes were flapping. The nature of my excitement changed when, as a birder, I realized I had seen my first Canada geese.

One of the reasons why migratory geese had become an unusual sight is that market hunters of the 19th and early 20th centuries had pounded them relentlessly as they moved south as well as on their wintering grounds. These same market hunters also were largely responsible for the resident geese that now seem as numerous as pigeons. They kept pinioned flocks of live decoy geese that, once their use was declared illegal in 1935, were the seed populations for today's resident goose populations. Other seedings came from state and federal programs designed to boost the declining migrant populations, not just in the eastern but across much of the countries.

Problem was that the geese from seeded populations chose to stay where they were and not migrate. By the late 1960s, people in many parts of the land began to see small groups of geese by inland ponds and in inshore coastal waters. The goose boom was on. Resident geese, defined as those which hatch locally and stay put, are now established in every state but Hawaii and across Canada. Public antipathy towards them has grown as young ball players and adult golfers step in the smelly results of their metabolic processes left behind in the grass. Even ardent animal lovers call for the eradication of the fowl that foul their lawns and playgrounds.

Along with the purity of wild behavior, the resident geese have lost their genetic identity. Depending on which taxonomists you believe, ther are between a half dozen or so and 11 subspecies of Canada geese. The migrants are mostly the Atlantic subspecies while residents are mongrels, a mix of four or more subspecies in many cases. Some migrants inevitably peel off migration and heed the siren call of the residents, subtracting further from the migrant populations. Be that as it may, as a species, the Canada goose is thriving, although as it depends more and more on living cheek-by-jowl with humans, some of its wild glory vanishes.

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