By Hannah Phillips –
Here in Vermont, the passage of fall foliage marks the arrival of stick season. For a smaller group of birding enthusiasts, it also marks the triumphant return of the snow geese. Every year, thousands of snow geese descend upon the Dead Creek Wildlife Refuge in Addison, seeking respite and fuel on their journey south from the Canadian arctic to the mid-Atlantic coast. This year, though, things might look a bit different.
Since the mid 1960s, the raucous arrival of thousands of honking snow geese (Chen caerulescens) through the gray October clouds has been a spectacle worthy of a field day. The geese descend from their 2000-foot cruising altitude in smooth uniformity, applying the brakes dramatically in “falling leaf” formation as they approach Dead Creek below. Landing en masse on the shore and in the creek, the air fills with a cacophony of what seem to be triumphant shouts: “Glad we made it!”
As celebrated as their arrival is in Vermont, snow geese are anything but rare. In fact, they have the distinction of being one of the most abundant waterfowl in North America[i]. Once they arrive here in Vermont, they’ll chow voraciously on the region’s finest assortment of grass and sedge roots. Or, at least they used to. Murmurs in the birding community suggest snow geese dietary preferences are changing, and their migratory patterns are changing to follow their taste buds.
This change in forage is purely out of necessity. Populations have increased dramatically over the last one hundred years, the result of a hunting ban imposed in 1916 to allow a dwindling population to rebound[ii]. And rebound they did. Although hunting reopened in 1975, snow geese are now so plentiful that food is proving hard to come by; they must find food, or they’ll starve. So, what’s on the menu? Agricultural plant remains – the most abundant food around. Some geese have become so reliant on agricultural fields for food that they are now adjusting their migratory routes to stopover in prime farmland.
Despite plentiful agriculture in Vermont’s Champlain Valley, our forage is proving inferior to that in New York. Here, nearby farmers typically harvest their corn for cow silage, which leaves little waste material left for munching. Across the lake in New York, farmers often harvest corn as a commodity, leaving the stalks behind[iii]. As a result, the number of geese visiting Dead Creek each year has declined dramatically. In 2005, ten thousand snow geese stopped over; in 2006, that number dropped to five thousand[iv]. Since then, number have held steady at three to five thousand each year, with around two thousand geese already reported for this fall[v].
Is the geese’s absence necessarily concerning? If you’re one of the many visitors who make the annual trip to Dead Creek adorned with binoculars, puffy coats and neck warmers, their absence may make you feel as empty as Thanksgiving spent without the chattering, bickering, well-loved guests. And, if you’re a wildlife biologist, keeping the wildlife management area an attractive stopover spot for geese helps minimize damage to neighbors’ crops, increases public interest in wildlife and increases the potential for hunting (another solution to limit population growth). There is incentive to keep the birds close.
Snow goose biologists have planned for just this scenario[vi]. What to do if the snow geese disappear: plant crops to lure them back to Addison. Vermont officials have already converted upland portions of Dead Creek to agricultural fields featuring a rotating crop of corn and hay, although the geese have yet to find it[vii]. It’s a crop artillery race against New York, and the winner is by no means fixed.
While a visit to Dead Creek this fall may not yield the same giddying barrage of honking that it has in past years, that doesn’t mean they’re gone for good. If you’re in need of a weekend excursion, hop in your car, drive down to Route 17 in Addison, and train your eyes to the sky. Bring a snow-globe for good luck – perhaps a good shake will prompt a flock of one thousand geese to flutter through the clouds in the first big snowstorm of fall.
Hannah Phillips is a first year student in the Ecological Planning Program.
[i] Mowbray, T. B., Cooke, F., & Ganter, B. (2012). “Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens).” The Birds of North America, No. 514 (A. Poole, Ed.). Retrieved from The Birds of North America Online, Ithaca, New York: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/514/articles/introduction
[ii] Mowbray, T. B., Cooke, F., & Ganter, B. (2012).
[iii] Alfieri, A. Personal Communication, Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife. (2015, October 26).
[iv] Alfieri, A. (2015, October 26).
[v] Pfeiffer, B. (2015, October 25). “The 2015 Snow Goose Scoop.” Retrieved from http://bryanpfeiffer.com/the-snow-goose-scoop/.
[vi] Snowgoose, Swan, and Brant Committee of the Atlantic Flyway Gamebird Technical Section. (2009). “Management Plan for Greater Snow Geese in the Atlantic Flyway.” Retrieved from http://www.dnr.state.md.us/wildlife/Hunt_Trap/pdfs/2009_GreaterSnowGoose_MgtPlan.pdf
[vii] Alfierio, A. (2015, October 26).
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