[Birdtalk] Banded Geese

[Bill Fenimore]

Doug Roberts observed a banded Canada goose recently and requested information for reporting banded birds.  I sent Doug a reply, letting him to know that he could report banded birds to Rich Hansen DWR Manager at FBWMA and/or Tom Aldrich, DWR Waterfowl Coordinator for Utah.

Here are the band numbers and location that Doug reported to Rich and Tom:  

Here are the numbers on the bands of 6 Canada Geese that I saw at Lake Park in SLC, on 21 Jan 2009:
YA35
YC67
YC71
YC00
YV46
YT99

Rich Hanson's reply to Doug is pasted below.  I know that his reply will be of interest to many of you.  Reporting your observations is very important and appreciated by DWR.

Urban goose banding and relocation

 

            The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources has taken on a three-year Urban goose banding and relocation study.  The study began in 2006, with 1,000 geese taken out of Salt Lake City.  We took 500 adults down to Delta, to try to teach them to migrate and also to expose them to harvest.  We then took 500 juveniles to Northern Utah marshes and released them with "wild" geese, hoping that the "urban" juvenile geese would imprint on these wild birds and stay out of the city.  To monitor birds returning to the city, we put a red plastic leg band on the adults in addition to an aluminum leg band; and we put a yellow plastic leg band on the juveniles in addition to an aluminum leg band.  During the first year's monitoring we found some 50-75 adults that had returned to the city and only 8 juveniles.  However, most of the time the geese were observed, they were on water and this did not allow us to see if they had leg bands.  

 

            With the observation obstacles that were experienced in year one, we decided to put 900 neck collars on adults between years two and three.  In addition to the 900 neck collars, we just put an aluminum leg band on 900 other adults to use these as control birds and banded over 1,500 more juveniles with the yellow bands and aluminum bands. The neck collars gave us a lot better idea of just how many adults are returning to the city.  We have read around 200 unique collars that have returned. As for the juveniles, we only observed 8 back in the city.  Based on our observations and experience, this project has been a huge success with only a 20% return rate of collared birds!  

 

            Some other interesting facts include: Many of our 2006 and 2007 juveniles were harvested in Canada.  That tells us that these birds have done exactly what we wanted them to do, which was imprint on the wild birds.  We even had one of the 2006 juveniles get shot in Missouri last hunting season.  First year birds also tend to move north soon after they have grown their primary flight feathers.  This is proven by the 50 + juvenile birds that have been shot in Idaho.  The harvest rate on both the adults and juveniles are over 20%, which is a higher harvest rate that we get on wild birds.

 

            If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me!

 

Sincerely,

Rich Hansen

Farmington Bay WMA manager

Utah migratory bird banding coordinator

richhansen at utah.gov

801-451-7386



Regards,


Bill Fenimore
801-699-9330 Cellular
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