Geese taking shelter in downtown Chicago

Higher temperatures are making northern areas more hospitable for creatures, experts say

Hunters near Chicago may be crying fowl.

When hunters invaded the agricultural fields that could sustain Canada geese during long winter months, the geese responded with an unexpected invasion of their own.

Researchers say Canada geese are flocking to downtown Chicago during the winter to avoid hunters in surrounding rural areas by taking residence in the city’s green spaces, rooftops and rail yards.

“Half of the birds that left Chicago in winter were shot by hunters,” said Mike Ward, an ornithologist at the University of Illinois.

“But we never had a bird that wintered in Chicago die. And so it does suggest that they’ve figured out when hunting season is, where it’s at.”

The results of the wild goose chase to discover just what so many Canada geese were doing in downtown Chicago during the winter were recently published in the Condor: Ornithological Applications journal.

Ward said geese living in the non-tradi- tional habitat of Chicago try to keep a low profile and avoid expending energy to make it through the winter.

“I think that geese are smarter than people give them credit for,” Ward said. “They’ve kind of figured out a place to go to be as safe as they can over the winter.”

Occasionally, a goose “will kind of chicken out and go south,” Ward said.

“Those are the ones that usually get shot.”

Christopher Sharp, a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service, said Canada geese with transmitters in the GTA spent “significant” amounts of time on industrial rooftops, on the waterfront and in large storm water ponds along major highways.

In Toronto, somewhere between 50 and 75 per cent of female nesting geese wearing transmitters being tracked by researchers left the GTA during the winter. The majority of those birds spent the winter in North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia — also exposing them to hunters, Sharp said.

As southern Canada and the northern United States become more suitable for Canada geese, humans increasingly have to contend with the Canadian icon. “More and more, we have humangoose conflicts in these large urban centres,” Sharp said of the last 20 to 30 years. “And that’s something that’s relatively new.”

Sharp studies the ecology of urban nesting Canada geese and is conducting research to help better manage human-goose conflict.

“Changes to agriculture and the creation of these large urban refuges has made southern Ontario more suitable for Canada geese overall,” he said. “That coupled with climate change . . . likely enables more geese to spend the winter in Ontario than what would have historically.”

Ward said that traditionally, Canada geese would not winter in Chicago, Toronto, Detroit or much of the northern Midwest.

“They would go down to Arkansas, southern Illinois, Kentucky, those areas,” Ward explained.

“But over the last couple decades, they’ve been wintering further and further north, in these urban areas.”

Danny Moro, project manager at the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority, said he thinks human-goose conflicts are increasing. “Is it more geese?” he said. “Are people more aware of these geese? Are residents and park users using parks more often now, because we’re providing better waterfront access? There are a number of things at play where these conflicts could be occurring.”

Airports are one place where human-goose conflicts can have fatal consequences. Toronto Pearson has an “extensive wildlife management program in place to mitigate the risk to aircraft presented by birds,” a spokesperson told the Star.

Preventive measures include wildlife control officers and trained dogs to deter geese from staying on the property.

Sharp said the solution to human-goose conflict is habitat modification: “So making the habitat where these human-goose conflicts are occurring less appealing to geese.”