This winter, more than ever before, I’ve noticed large groups of geese winging over my house, squawking and honking.
They don’t fly in the typical V formation. These geese seem to go haphazardly in all directions, seeming to shout to one another, “Where are we going? Where are we going?”
For a bit longer, many of them are going nowhere.
According to Heath Michael Hagy, of the Illinois Natural History Survey, a division of the University of Illinois’ Prairie Research Institute, there are two populations of Canada geese that congregate in the Chicago area. One is the temperate-breeding variety, often called “resident geese,” who stick around all year long.
The other is subarctic-breeding Canada geese, which breed in the southern portions of the Hudson Bay area and migrate to Wisconsin and Illinois during the winter months.
“When the weather gets really cold, these birds tend to sit at this latitude for a month or two,” Hagy said.
As the weather warms, the subarctic-breeding geese begin to “stairstep” their way back north and return to Hudson Bay by late May and early June.
Hagy, who’s currently involved in a study of Canada geese in the Chicago area, says the combination of geese wintering farther north than in the past and a greater resident geese population has led to more of the birds overall in our region. They tend to gather along the Fox River, the Des Plaines River and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.
These large and growing flocks of geese pose serious threats to air traffic during landing and takeoffs at Midway Airport.
They also create health issues for humans when their droppings can accumulate. A goose can deposit between one and three pounds of excrement a day.
At times, the Naperville Park District has been forced to wash down the Riverwalk when the problem gets really bad.
Although the park district doesn’t count geese, Park Operations Manager Chuck Papanos said he has seen the number in Naperville “ebb and flow” over the winter. He thinks our relatively snowless winter this year, coupled with an unfrozen DuPage River, has made it easier for the geese to feed and may be why more of them are sticking.
“If this was a more normal winter in terms of snow, we likely wouldn’t be seeing geese in a few Naperville locations,” Papanos said.
But with the winter we have had, the geese haven’t had to put any effort into going anywhere else.
Of course, all of the parks and fields, retention ponds, golf courses, and subdivision lots covered with highly fertilized lawns don’t help either, Papanos added.
The park district receives a permit from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources every spring allowing them to addle eggs in order to keep them from hatching. The Humane Society of America calls addling, in which eggs are covered in corn oil or removed from the nest, the most humane way to limit flock growth and stabilize goose populations.
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Then again, we may be the architects of our own problem given that some geese may be sticking around because people like to feed them.
Last summer, the Riverwalk Foundation, the Riverwalk Commission and the Naperville Park District banded together to produce book markers, cards and signage reminding residents about the downside of feeding wildlife. The park district also installed plywood dog silhouettes that move with the wind in order to keep geese from lingering.
They were only somewhat effective, Papanos admitted.
“After a few days of seeing the silhouette move the same way, geese become less cautious,” he said. “For having small brains, they have figured out how to survive pretty well.”
Cathy Janek is a freelance writer who lives in Naperville.
Twitter @CathyJanek