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Badly Placed Canadian Goose Nest
I get email every year from people trying to help out canadian geese who have made REALLY bad decisions in where to build a nest. You can actually make things worse by trying to help.
The Question:
We have a Canadian Goose nesting in a mulched area in our parking lot at work. I'm concerned because its mate, which was around when their nest was being built, is nowhere in sight. I haven't seen the mother leave the nest in days and I'm concerned she may not be getting water or food. Should I be putting water out for her?
Also, last year, she sat on her nest in that very same spot for weeks and weeks. The eggs never hatched, and finally she gave up - it was heartbreaking. She sat there through driving rain and bitter cold nights - and it just seemed so sad that her chicks never came! I felt so bad for her when they didn't hatch - what can cause that?
Could you please let me know if there is anything we can do in order to ensure her health and safety while she's nesting, and since she's in the parking lot, anything we can do once they (hopefully) hatch to try to avoid her loosing her chicks? There's increasing traffic in this area and no ponds or bodies of water - I can't figure out whey she chose this spot!
My Answer
There are literally millions and millions of Canadian Geese in the US now and they nest EVERYWHERE. Probably she nested there because there is short grass for eating grubs out of and her parents nested in a parking lot, so she thought it was an equally good idea.
As heartbreaking as it is, it is a GOOD thing that not all eggs hatch. If they did, we would literally be wall to wall goose, and have a HUGE health issue with their huge volumes of waste they produce. It's a balancing act. The geese that nest in safe, healthy areas raise healthy chicks. The geese that nest in unsafe areas don't have chicks that survive, and it keeps the population at least reasonably under control. I say reasonably because canadian geese have become a gigantic issue in many towns and they actively have to hunt them to try to give the remaining geese a chance at survival without starvation.
So I know it's hard, but yes, her mate probably got hit by a car or something, and she'll have to raise her chicks (assuming there are any) on her own. Many geese end up doing this if they nest in unwise areas. It's actually better this way, if they are not smart enough to nest somewhere safe, the last thing you want is for them to raise a ton of chicks with that same problem and now you have geese trying to nest on highway medians and other places that make no sense at all. It's nature trying to ensure that only chicks with wise decision making skills end up creating babies.
Really the best thing you can do (next year at this point) is encourage her NOT to nest in parking lots. The chance of keeping tiny baby geese safe in a parking lot is rather slim, and if they DO learn that parking lots are great places to raise kids, now you're going to have the same problem multiplied by 6 in a year or two ...
If she isn't healthy and therefore isn't making healthy eggs, it's time for her to learn to go find another location that DOES provide natural, nutritious food for her, so she can raise chicks that can carry on the line.
Remember, if you somehow help her along so she does cause sickly, weak geese to hatch, they wouldn't last long in the real world. The aim for any wild creature should always be for it to be in its ideal habitat, so it can naturally raise healthy chicks that can go on to continue the line. If we as humans interfere because we feel sorry for creatures, as well meaning as we might be, we can make things far worse for the poor things ... if she burns out all her energy trying to care for chicks that had no chance of surviving, it means she might not make it to next year when, in a better location, she COULD have had chicks that were perfect.
Canadian Gooses Main Index of Photos and Articles
Encyclopedia of Birds - Descriptions and Photos
Note: I originally wrote this content while I edited the site at birding.bellaonline.com. That site has permission to show my content.
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