Last week, I mentioned the large number of tundra swans in the Alabama Swamps that were stopping over on their spring migration back to their nesting area in the Arctic. It’s quite a sight when there are 500 to 800 of them sitting on a marsh! I hope you got over to see them, as they are now thinning out.
You may see another “white bird event” soon as snow geese begin their trip back to the far north. Until recently, snow geese were kind of a rarity here in the spring. Several years ago, a number of large flocks of these birds began to show up in Orleans and Niagara counties. Traveling in huge flocks, they present quite a sight on the ground or in the air. One of the reasons for the increased sightings is that the snow goose population has exploded from approximately 50,000 birds in the mid 1960s to more than 1 million birds in recent years.
Why has the snow goose population increased so dramatically? One, the availability of waste grains on agricultural fields provided a vast new food supply for them. Two, continuation of restrictive hunting regulations during the 1970s and 1980s allowed the population to grow while hunter harvest rates declined.
Large numbers of snow geese feeding on natural vegetation can destroy large areas of coastal marshland during migration and winter. Serious damage to agricultural crops such as hay, winter wheat, barley and rye occurs in migration and wintering areas as well. These factors resulted in a higher reproductive rate, a higher adult survival rate, and offspring that were in much better condition to survive.
However, the overabundance of these geese, which nest in far northern regions of North America, is harming their fragile Arctic breeding habitat. The damage to the habitat is, in turn, harming the health of the geese and other bird species that depend on the tundra.
From mid-March to mid-April, more than 100,000 snow geese may spend time in New York, fueling up for their return to the Arctic region in May. Waterfowl managers were concerned about the impacts of too many snow geese and have recommended a population goal of 500,000 to 750,000 in the whole East Coast Atlantic Flyway. The only practical way to reduce the population to that level is to increase hunter harvest, so in 2008, federal and state snow goose regulations were changed.
Before 2008, the snow goose season closed on March 10 but now it runs until April 15, which coordinates more with their prime migrating period. Along with the new late snow goose season, new regulations allow the use of certain methods that are illegal for other waterfowl hunting. Shooting time is from 30 minutes before sunrise to 30 minutes after sunset (normally shooting hours are from sunrise to sunset), the bag limit is 25 snow geese per day with no possession limit, and electronic calls and unplugged shotguns are allowed (when hunting other waterfowl, only three shells can be loaded in the gun). A non-toxic shot is still required.
One of the other reasons we are seeing more snow geese is that hunting pressure in the eastern part of the state (which is their main migration route) is pushing the birds this way, looking for feeding areas. Snow geese are difficult to hunt because they normally move around in large flocks, so there are more eyes to spot trouble, and then when there is trouble, a lot of birds get educated very quickly! Hunting snow geese also requires a much larger decoy setup than Canada goose hunting, as they are used to seeing huge flocks of their comrades. Right now, they don’t see much hunting pressure in this area, but that will change if their numbers keep growing and they keep showing up here.
I have had recent reports of a few large flocks of these birds along Lake Ontario in Niagara and Orleans counties. If you hear of a flock of them somewhere, go immediately if you want to see them; traveling in large masses, they “clean up” the farm fields quickly and move on. And if you spot some, give me a jingle, because I love photographing white birds.