Yankee Southern Transplants in the Upper Midwest: Wild goose chase

Thanks to an "all hands on deck" call for help, I was able to participate in the annual goose banding effort this week with the wildlife management crew. The DNR biologists organize the overall effort with a lot of assistance from volunteers with the Green Bay Duck Hunters Association. Volunteers do a lot of the scouting to find out where the geese are hanging out and assist with capturing and handling the geese. A lot of the day involves "dashboard time" riding around in a caravan of vehicles transporting DNR staff and volunteers to various sites in the county, and then rounding up the geese upon arrival for banding. At this time of year, the geese are molting (replacing) their feathers and are unable to fly for a short time, making it a little easier to capture them. But boy, can they run!

Upon arriving at a site, a long, flexible fence is set up in a strategic location, while volunteers and staff gently herd the geese into the pen (on foot or by kayak/canoe) and close them in. Next, staff enter the pen and hand geese over the fence to volunteers who walk them over to biologist banders. The banders identify the sex of the bird and whether it is an immature bird or adult and then place a metal band with an ID number around one of the legs. This unique identifier indicates the bird's banding location (and in the case of the immature birds, presumably their birthplace), should it be harvested or killed later somewhere else. The information collected can be valuable for population studies related to survival and mortality, migration and dispersal, and reproduction success (see the USGS Bird Banding Laboratory for more information). After receiving their new bracelets, the birds are released back toward the water to go on their way. The whole process moves fairly quickly with plenty of volunteers and 5-8 banders going at one time.

I got to participate in every aspect of the process over the course of two long days in the field, from carrying and working the fence, rounding up geese into the fence, keeping track of and handing bands to biologists, going in the pen to hand geese off to volunteers, carrying geese to the biologists, AND I even got to band and release a immature male. Many of the volunteers were kids, so that made it neat to see how excited the kids were to help. Several young ones stuck around for some long days and did a really good job helping.

I assisted for the first two days of the effort targeting Kewaunee (on Lake Michigan) and Outagamie (around Appleton) Counties, the neighboring counties to Green Bay. The team rounded up and banded 428 new geese and noted 85 recaptures (geese that already had a band) over those two days, making it more than halfway to their quota of 800 birds. After banding the following day in Brown County (around Green Bay), 850 new birds were banded at 19 different sites, reaching and exceeding the quota. I am already looking forward to both duck and mourning dove banding later in the year!