Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
There are two kinds of people on the pathways along the Ottawa River.
1. Those who feed Canada geese.
2. Those who hate Canada geese.
Something about this big bird makes people crazy. Many are those who would like to punt its fat, feathery derrière into next Thursday. Nor does it help that its derrière just looks, you know, so puntable!
They are, doubtless, the messiest bird in our menagerie, leaving vibrantly-coloured calling cards all over the place. They also stare, which is just plain rude.
Humans are weird. We divide birds into two categories. Those we encourage—cardinals, jays, chickadees, grosbeaks, for instance—and those we’ve decided are vermin: seagulls, pigeons, crows and geese. Especially geese.
The National Capital Commission does not aggressively attempt to relocate the river’s seasonal geese population, which seems to have grown exponentially. It says it uses landscaping techniques and longer grass to prevent the geese from having easy access along the river shoreline.
This may be so. The geese are unmoved.
In Gatineau Park, it is experimenting with mechanical “raptor” devices intended to scare gulls and geese away from popular beaches, Breton Beach at Lac Philippe being the testing ground. I have witnessed them at work. They are loud and silly. Trust me: you do not want to see them proliferate.
The NCC also discourages residents from feeding wildlife, about which we suffer collective deafness.
I see other places are attacking the problem with more imagination, using, of all things, dogs and swans.
Canada geese, attracted by the St. Lawrence River and possibly cheap cigarettes, have become a nuisance in Lamoureux Park, Cornwall’s showcase green space on the waterfront.
The city has decided to spend up to $10,000 to hire a dog handler with a smart pooch.
Stephen Alexander, the city’s general manager of planning, parks and recreation, said geese have increasingly become a problem in the park, which has bike paths and children’s play areas.
The dog handler is to visit the park several times a week, letting Rover loose to put the bum’s rush on the birds. The dog, we are assured, knows enough to chase birds and not toddlers or unsuspecting cyclists.
“For us, it’s very much a trial,” said Mr. Alexander, noting that the geese have been a ongoing problem along the public parks system that fringes the St. Lawrence east and west of Cornwall.
“There’s no clean, easy solution to these geese.”
Dogs could probably supply a solution in Ottawa, but alas, the NCC has Fido pretty much muzzled along the river. Not only must dogs be on a leash, but they are not permitted in the water or even too close to the shoreline.
(There are good reasons for this. The bike paths, some days, are like the 401. Throwing a bunch of at-large dogs into the mix of joggers, strollers and speeding cyclists is a recipe for carnage. So many Labs, so many geese. It would not be a pretty sight.)
Alexandria, about 100 kilometres east of Ottawa, sits in the township of North Glengarry. Not far from the heart of town lies Mill Pond, a 70-acre waterway that is home to a municipal beach, just as it supplies the public’s drinking water.
At different times of the year, hundreds of geese decide to settle in.
This year, the township is fighting fire with fire. It has put two pairs of mute swans on the pond, based on the theory that the larger, territorial birds will make life uncomfortable for the geese.
You can’t beat the price: $75 per bird, no overtime costs.
The flight-restricted swans only went in last week and a spokesman for the township said it’s too soon to know whether the tactic is working.
This is not Plan A. Last year, the township had someone fire a flare gun on a regular basis, in the hopes the noise would scare the geese away. Didn’t quite do the trick.
Across North America, Canada geese numbers have exploded in the last 50 years, with a total population about eight times the size it was in the 1950s.
As often happens, human intervention in the matter has had unintended consequences.
It is a feature of Canada geese, a migratory bird, that they return to the same nest, year after year, where their parents once nested, something like those slacker Gen-Xers.
Local bird experts will tell you that before the 1970s or so, there were no nesting geese in Ottawa. But they were introduced by a duck hunting club near Shirley’s Bay. Thank you, Elmer Fudd.
Short of a wholesale slaughter, for which there would be very little public appetite, it looks like we’re stuck with this waddling army. The birds have employed a classic strategy: divide the enemy (feeders, haters), and conquer.
Imagine that. They cooked our goose.
Contact Kelly Egan at 613-726-5896 or by e-mail, kegan@thecitizen.canwest.com
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008