Canada Goose

Branta Canadensis

eBird describes the Canada Goose like this:  A large brown goose with a black neck and white chinstrap. Overall size, bill size, and brown coloration variable across subspecies. Occurs in any open or wetland habitat, from city parks and golf courses to pristine marshes and Arctic tundra. Typically in flocks or family groups. Often seen in mixed flocks with Cackling Goose, especially in central and western North America. Canada Goose is almost always larger, longer-necked, and longer-billed than Cackling, although beware there is some overlap between the smallest Canada and largest Cackling. Abundant and widespread throughout the U.S. and Canada; rare in Mexico. Introduced and widely established in Europe. Listen for loud honking calls, especially as flocks migrate overhead in the classic V formation.  All About Birds provides this basic description for the Canada Goose:  The big, black-necked Canada Goose with its signature white chinstrap mark is a familiar and widespread bird of fields and parks. Thousands of “honkers” migrate north and south each year, filling the sky with long V-formations. But as lawns have proliferated, more and more of these grassland-adapted birds are staying put in urban and suburban areas year-round, where some people regard them as pests.

Early in 2022 I began seeing reports of a continuing rarity (the Canada Goose) in the area where my daughter lives (Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas).   The reports and the location were pretty consistent, so I decided I would try to locate the bird the next time I visited Liz, her husband David, and Little J.D.  On Sunday, February 6, 2022, we took lunch from Papoulis and visited our daughter in Fair Oaks Ranch.  After lunch, while my grandson was taking a nap, I slipped away and drove over to the location where the bird had been reported (on one of the lakes at the golf course).  I located the bird right away, and spent a few minutes watching and taking photos.  For the eBird report I filed on this siting, look here.

THE CANADA GOOSE I WATCHED ON FEBRUARY 6, 2022, AT FAIR OAKS RANCH, TEXAS.


Cool Facts About the Canada Goose From All About Birds:

    • At least 11 subspecies of Canada Goose have been recognized, although only a couple are distinctive. In general, the geese get smaller as you move northward, and darker as you go westward. The four smallest forms are now considered a different species: the Cackling Goose.
    • Some migratory populations of the Canada Goose are not going as far south in the winter as they used to. This northward range shift has been attributed to changes in farm practices that makes waste grain more available in fall and winter, as well as changes in hunting pressure and changes in weather.
    • Individual Canada Geese from most populations make annual northward migrations after breeding. Nonbreeding geese, or those that lost nests early in the breeding season, may move anywhere from several kilometers to more than 1500 km northward. There they take advantage of vegetation in an earlier state of growth to fuel their molt. Even members of “resident” populations, which do not migrate southward in winter, will move north in late summer to molt.
    • The “giant” Canada Goose, Branta canadensis maxima, bred from central Manitoba to Kentucky but was nearly driven extinct in the early 1900s. Programs to reestablish the subspecies to its original range were in many places so successful that the geese have become a nuisance in many urban and suburban areas.
    • In a pattern biologists call “assortative mating,” birds of both sexes tend to choose mates of a similar size.
    • The oldest known wild Canada Goose was a female, and at least 33 years, 3 months old when she was shot in Ontario in 2001. She had been banded in Ohio in 1969.