Why are we talking about Canada Geese? We’re watching geese in two abandoned Bald Eagle nests right now! Both nests have six eggs, although the geese in N1 – the first nest we watched Mom and Dad in – began laying on March 9 and the geese in N3B – a replacement nest we built in 2015 – began laying on March 18. Hatch watch for N1 starts on Saturday, April 12. Hatch watch for N2B starts on Monday, April 21. We don’t get to see the geese for very long, so tune in now if you want to watch them!
It’s happened every year since 2022. A Canada Goose couple takes over a Bald Eagle nest and we start getting messages questioning their intellectual capacity and/or sanity. Don’t those geese know they should be nesting on the ground? This question goes straight to the core of observing a wild nest. It can be deeply stressful to watch birds engage in behaviors that seem harmful to them, but they understand their lives in ways we may never fully grasp.
Geese in a Tree? How Can That Be!
We aren’t used to seeing Canada Geese in Bald Eagle nests because Bald Eagles weren’t around to build them. Eagles vanished from Iowa in 1905, from Illinois in the early 1900s, and from Indiana in 1897. By 1963, a survey found just 417 pairs nesting in the lower 48 states.
Imagine: it is 1915 and the last Bald Eagle nest just eroded from a tree somewhere in Iowa. Did anyone notice? Did anyone care? Bald Eagles wouldn’t return to nest in Iowa until 1977.
Did Canada Geese ever nest in trees? Absolutely! In 1804, Captain Lewis Merriweather reported Canada Geese nesting in trees along the Missouri River in North Dakota. On April 26, 1820, Naturalist Titian Ramsay Peale recorded ‘…a goose in peaceable possession of an eagle’s nest’ near what is now Council Bluffs, Iowa. Nest reuse was also reported in the Wilson Bulletin in 1928, as part of a study in Montana’s Flathead Valley in 1955, and in an episode of Wild Kingdom from the late 1950s. Ground-nesting was probably more common than nest reuse: there is, after all, a lot more ground than vacant nests. But nest-reuse was almost certainly more common when there were more eagles to build nests and more geese to adopt them.
Goose and gosling in 2023. Males provide protection, but females incubate and brood during the very short period that goslings need it.
Picture yourself in 1980. Bald eagles are beginning to return and a sighting is rare enough to gather mentions in local news and flocks of human visitors. You pick up a landline to call your friends and tell them all about an eagle you spotted yesterday. Some of them scoff. An eagle? Impossible! The local golf course manager still admires the small flock of geese at his water hazard, but he’ll be trying to get rid of them in a few years.
Canada Geese – and especially the subspecies Branta canadensis maxima – also dwindled. Maxima was believed extinct in the wild until the mid-1960s, when biologist Harold Hanson identified a small population nesting in Rochester, MN. Recovery efforts were successful, but the geese surprised researchers by adapting to urban environments. Much like the Bald Eagle, the rebounding population was human-tolerant and happy to take advantage of an environment with fewer ground-based predators and plenty of food.
Canada Geese and a Bald Eagle in Decorah
Everything Old is New Again!
It’s 1999 and the US government has just removed the Bald Eagle from the Endangered Species list. With Bald Eagles and Canada Geese seemingly everywhere, we’re about to see the resumption of an old behavior that is new to us. Geese in a tree? How can that be!
While they were gone, Canada Geese moved into urban environments: an easy, safe way to avoid ground-based predators. But now that Bald Eagles – and ospreys, and hawks, and great blue herons, and Canada geese – are back in great numbers, we’re seeing the return of an instinct that helps protect eggs from ground-based predators and possibly from other geese. From a population perspective, it’s much better to lose a few goslings in a jump than to have whole clutches wiped out by foxes, coyotes, and dogs.
Did I expect to find myself completely charmed by Canada Geese? I did not. But she is beautiful!
Search ‘Geese nesting in trees’ or a similar phrase, and you’ll find a lot of examples. I love watching the geese just for themselves – the adults are so beautiful and the young are so engaging! But I also love the entangled story of Bald Eagles, Canada Geese, and people. Habitat is home, and home is where the story starts.
Making a difference
Targeted conservation acts and laws make a difference. But the Endangered Species Act and other laws that protect wildlife and their homes are being targeted for destruction. More about that here:
What can you do? You should let your elected representatives know how you feel, but I also encourage everyone to join local groups to connect with others who share your passion for conservation and wildlife. It could be a ‘Friends’ group! It could be volunteering for a local wildlife rehabber. It could be a gardening group focused on native plants! If you hunt and fish, look at a local or regional chapter of Trout Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, a deer hunting organization (Minnesota Deer Hunters Association comes to my mind), or the Izaak Walton League. It could be a broad band of Great Old Broads for Wilderness! It could be a local or regional chapter of the Audubon Society! We worked hard for these protections and we don’t need to let them go.
Thanks to David Graber for letting me know about Titian Ramsay Peale’s and Captain Lewis Merriweather’s observations of geese nesting in trees. I had a lot of fun learning about Titian Ramsay Peale, who I had never heard of, and revisiting Lewis and Merriweather’s journals.
The Raptor Resource Project