Canada geese hang around Sisters

If there is one member of our native waterfowl community that drives land-managers out of their minds it's Canada geese.

Golf course and city park managers look at Canada geese with a jaundiced eye. Black Butte Ranch golf course managers have done everything legally imaginable to prevent Canada geese from staying too long on the greens, even putting out fake eggs for the females to hatch. And Bend Parks and Recreation chased them with dogs and trucked them out of town.

Geese are harassed daily (legally) to get them off the golfing grounds and parks mostly for one reason: goose poop. Then too, a male Canada goose can become a very hard-to-get-along-with animal when the female decides to nest near a water hazard on a golf course. The male's job is to protect his mate and her eggs, and that they do, with extreme vigor, whether it be human or wild animal that comes too close.

But there is nothing more pleasing to the human eye or ear than a gaggle of Canada geese winging overhead in their characteristic "V" formation. Their call - as they communicate with each other - is the very essence of "wild."

At this time of year hundreds of thousands of them are going north, south, east and west.

Our "resident" geese could be in Bend, Burns, Klamath, Nevada, as far south as the Water Ranch at Gilbert, Arizona - or they simply hang out here.

The geese now feeding in the fields just off the junction of Cloverdale Road and Highway 126 are probably down from Washington and Canada - or maybe they're from Black Butte Ranch.

Perhaps Rima Givot and her students could do a goose-banding and "ringing" project next year (after all, geese nest on the roof of Sisters Middle School) - they may see what's what with our local geese.

Birders have seen swans and geese wearing colorful, numbered neck bands, and colored bands on their legs, along with the usual USGS band, issued by the banding lab. That's one way to know what's going on. Waterfowl hunters should turn in any bands they find on a duck or goose.

Wherever all the geese we have in Sisters Country originated, they like what they've found and will probably stay the winter. Geese are grazers, and when they find grasses that offer what they need and taste good, they're hard to chase off - ask any golf course or park superintendent.

In the meantime, folks in Sisters Country can enjoy the sights and sounds of Canada geese as they fly overhead, going from one hay field and pasture to the next.