Biologists corral Canada geese for leg banding at Moosehorn

CALAIS – The Canada geese honked their displeasure and glided in the opposite direction as staff from the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge tried to round them up Monday for the annual leg banding.

Each year, the majestic birds that call the refuge home strut around the grounds or fly from marsh to marsh undisturbed – except during banding season.

The banding is part of the refuge’s goose-hunting management plan, “so that we know, based on the banding, what proportion of the birds are being killed by hunters,” Refuge biologist Andrew Weik said. “It helps in setting the hunting season.”

The roundup began around 5 a.m. Monday on the Upper and Middle Magurrewock Marsh near Charlotte Road.

Refuge staff and members of the Youth Conservation Corp., which includes high school students from Calais to Lubec, were there in force assisting in the capture. Seven watercraft were in the marshes and 12 people were on land.

Of the 30 geese that were spotted Monday, only seven were captured and two of them already had been banded, unlike last year when 85 fowl were captured and white bands slipped over their webbed feet and onto their spindly legs.

Weik said a scheduling problem had complicated this year’s banding. The slim supply of birds was because of the lateness of the roundup this year. For about three weeks each year, Canada geese remain grounded, awaiting new feathers. This year, many of the geese already had molted and were back in the air.

“Most of them flew away,” Weik said. “We were going to try this last week and it would have been better timing because we were probably right in the middle of wing molt last week, and by this week a lot of them had regained flight.”

Although the roundup was less than successful, the YCC helped herd those that were caught.

“The YCC were helpful in keeping the birds from going around the capture ground,” Weik said. “We tried to herd them like sheep, only they are a little smarter than sheep, to the upper Magurrewock Marsh and from there bring them into the capture ground.”

The few birds that were captured were kept in a temporary fenced-in area near the marsh. They are taken out one at a time.

“They each get an individually numbered leg band. We determine the age and sex of the bird, record all of that and let them go,” Weik said.

Next year, staff plan to start the hunt sooner.

Even though the numbers were small, the banding wasn’t a flop. It was an educational lesson for the YCC, “and also [gave] my summer crew a little more experience with handling birds and banding because we band quite a few ducks in the late summer and it gives them a little more experience to do that,” the biologist said.

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