Weighing in at up to 20 pounds, they preside over local waters with loud honks and dramatic splash landings.
They take to the air in striking V formations that have become synonymous with fall.
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And, yes, they leave their excrement — a pound or more per day, per adult bird — on golf courses, athletic fields, parks and schoolyards.
Love them or hate them, Canada geese loom large in Illinois, where their resident (largely nonmigratory) population has grown from an estimated 70,000 birds in 1997 to about 120,000 today, and migratory birds are settling in for long winter stays.
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“We’ve definitely seen a really large increase in the number of (migratory) geese spending the winter in Chicago, which was perplexing initially, because if you had a choice to go hang out in Louisiana or Tennessee in the winter, why would you stay in Chicago?” said Mike Ward, a professor of natural resources and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Ward thinks the geese benefit from conserving the energy they would need for a traditional migration, and avoiding the hunters that they have to contend with in rural areas.
If that sounds like a complex strategy for a goose, Ward says to bear in mind that migrating Canada geese can handle the challenges of urban bike paths, speeding traffic and hungry polar bears — sometimes all in the same week.
“Like most birds, they’re able to make choices and decisions, learn and act upon information they gather,” Ward said.
There are thousands more migratory Canada geese wintering in Chicago than there were in the 1990s, Ward said, and he suspects other urban areas in the state have seen increases as well.
While the overall population of resident Canada geese has remained relatively stable in Illinois for the past 15 years, at about 100,000 to 140,000, population shifts mean numbers in some urban and suburban areas may be growing, according to Ben Williams, the urban waterfowl project manager for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
The suburbs in particular are a sweet spot for resident geese, he said.
“People like their golf courses, they like these homeowners associations with pond and water features. And they’re creating perfect Canada goose habitat,” Williams said.
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Another bonus: Humans squeeze out natural predators, making it fairly safe.
The resident geese may act as beacons for migratory geese, who look down from the sky and see a place where members of their species have found food and safety, Williams said.
Some have speculated that climate change is playing a role in keeping migrating geese in northern states, but Ward doesn’t think it’s a big factor. Winters, while a bit warmer on average, can still get cold enough to endanger a goose. And extreme weather events related to climate change can actually create problems for geese wintering in Illinois, Ward said.
On the plus side, the geese, which need open water, can wait out short freezes, or move to rivers or Lake Michigan, which don’t always fully freeze. They have been known to use cooling ponds at power generators, which stay warmer in winter, Williams said.
In some ways, the Canada goose is a remarkable conservation success story. The birds were nearly driven out of most parts of North America in the early 1900s by commercial hunting, egg harvesting and loss of wetlands, according to the technical guide Managing Canada Geese in Urban Environments.
Thought to be extinct, the giant Canada goose — once plentiful in Illinois — was rediscovered in Minnesota in 1963 by Harold Hanson, a research biologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey.
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Captive breeding programs began, and states where Canada geese had once roamed wanted to release some into the wild.
Canada goose numbers grew steadily at first, then more rapidly in the early 1990s, according to Paul Curtis, a professor of wildlife science and management at Cornell University.
“We sort of created the problem,” Curtis said.
By the early 2000s, news stories of human-goose conflicts were popping up in the Chicago area, with complaints of geese flying into water fountains, stopping cars and eating vegetables at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Some of those problems have since sorted themselves out. In 2009, the Naperville Park District put out life-size plywood dog cutouts to discourage geese from congregating at its golf courses.
Kevin Carlson, the Park District’s director of golf, said the cutouts eventually stopped working, but natural predators — including coyotes — picked up the slack, eating eggs before they could hatch.
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For those who can’t rely on coyotes, the Chicago area is home to an array of goose control companies, including Rescue Me Goose Chasing in Orland Park, which uses Australian shepherds to herd geese off overpopulated properties.
Owner Tom Guilfoyle said his clients have included a church and a new retirement community with a pond. In the spring, he gets calls from corporations with attractive grounds and dozens of geese, some of them with nests to protect.
Nesting geese will hiss at people or fly toward their heads, attacks that can be unnerving, particularly for those who aren’t familiar with the behavior.
Williams, who fields calls about Canada geese for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, said he has run into similar situations.
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“(Canada geese) get accustomed to some of these suburban areas and they decide that right in front of the post office or in front of the restaurant is the right place to have a nest — and then they decide to aggressively defend that nest. That’s pretty common,” he said.
Williams said sometimes simply harassing the geese by chasing them off your land repeatedly can drive them to take up residence elsewhere. Changing your landscaping can help too; geese favor mowed lawns and easy access to water.
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Those with more persistent problems can get free state permits that allow the holder to prevent goose eggs from hatching by coating them with corn oil or shaking them. Williams said Illlinois residents with goose problems can reach him at 847-608-3177 or Ben.Williams@illinois.gov.
Human-goose relations appear to have calmed in the Chicago region since the early 2000s, but Ward noted that the Canada goose is still “the most hated bird species in Illinois.”
Now, with the geese flocking to urban and suburban areas in Champaign, Peoria and Springfield, those regions are seeing more conflicts.
“Champaign is kind of where Chicago was 20 years ago in terms of trying to figure out how to manage some of these populations and how to live with them,” Williams said.