From the Contact Station April 2024

The Grass is Always Greener Somewhere else

Spring is definitely here. Birds have begun to fly north from the refuge, over the refuge, and to the

refuge from the south. You will have noticed that the Swans are gone, except for a couple that are hiding in nooks on some of the lakes. Duck numbers are lower overall. The lovely Cinnamon Teals are showing up in time for nesting and the male Wood Ducks look so fine as they are chasing the females around the ponds and sloughs.  There is a lot of singing going on.  Wilson’s Snipes are calling and doing flight displays already.  I’ve already heard an

American Bittern do its odd call.   The big Western Canada Geese pairs are checking out or sitting nests along the dikes and water edges.

This is the time to start using your Merlin app to help you sort through all the bird songs.  If you haven’t downloaded it yet, give it some thought.  It is free and can be found in the app store of your phone.  As I have mentioned before, it isn’t 100% correct, but it really helps as you learn bird song and calls.  When in doubt, verify the identification with a sighting, especially if you use the app to log your bird findings in e-bird.   I keep getting Western Meadowlark when I am fairly certain it is one of the European Starlings flying around me doing

its best mimicking, so I look for the Meadowlark to make sure.  I haven’t found one yet.  The Yellow-headed Blackbirds should be here now.  The best way to find them is on the left between #3 and #4 is to listen first and then follow the sound with your binoculars.

Greener Grass:  It’s always amusing to watch the geese. A week or so ago there was a nice-sized flock of Cackling Geese, about 500, in the field to the south of the pond before #5. The flock was doing its usual lawn mower activity marching with heads down, nibbling the grass as they progressed. As I got closer to the part of the road that narrows with the trees on either side, the leaders of the flock started coming onto the road. They too did a little nibbling, probably picking up a stone or two that would help them in their food digestion. But

they were headed across the road to a very small field which has some new tree plantings and brush interspersed with some nice rich-looking green grass.  I stopped to watch them and waited. Goose by goose, the flock started to cross the road. As the leaders made their way into grass/tree/brushy growth, there wasn’t enough room for the rest of the flock. A crowd formed on the road, necks came up and everything stopped. A few turned around and looked back to see more geese following. They were at a standstill. You could imagine their confusion.  The ones still on the original side milled around a bit but continued to nibble.  Along with four other cars stopping behind me, we watched this play out for 15 minutes.  At that point, it looked like they needed a little bit of a nudge to solve their problem.  The car moved forward very slowly to see if they could come to a decision. Of course, that got everyone to lift their heads and look around at what was going on.  It seemed they were communicating in their cackler way, eventually making a group decision to fly up together and away to another feeding spot. The noise from their wings was spectacular. You are not often close enough to hear the lift-off.  I have to say, they did leave a lot of recycled grass on the road, which I was hoping would rub off my tires as I drove the rest of the auto tour.

Goose Migration for Breeding:  You will probably notice the scarcity of geese on the refuge by now.  Most of the wintering goose flocks are gone by mid-April at least.  So where do they go?

The precise timing of migration can be influenced by weather and food availability.  Some bird flocks will gather at staging areas where they fuel up before making the longer distance leg of their migration, sometimes flying nonstop overwater to breeding sites.  Most Canada and Cackler geese have a fidelity for specific breeding grounds with the female flying to where she was born and the male following.  Males and females form lasting pair bonds.  First-year birds will follow along with their parents to find wintering sites on the southern migration.  Studies have yet to be done on some of the Canada and Cackling Goose subspecies to determine if site fidelity to wintering grounds is also true.  This winter, a group of scientists from Alaska visited SW Washington and Oregon to capture and collar the Lesser Canada Goose and the Taverner Cackler Goose.  They were going to work on the Refuge, but the capture proved more challenging than expected and they had to move down into Oregon to include some of that area before the birds left.  We hope we can participate next year.  It is not clear which breeding areas these subspecies choose in Alaska.  It will be easier to manage and help these populations with a better understanding of their breeding and winter sites and flights between.

The Dusky Canada Goose, Branta canadensis occidentalis, breeds in southern Alaska in the Copper River delta and on several islands in the Gulf of Alaska and Prince William Sound.  They are the big, dark brown geese, some of which might have a red-orange collar. They have very particular habitat preferences for their breeding grounds.  The population got into trouble after the 1964 earthquake in Alaska.  The ground shifted several feet, changing their favored habitat, altering water and salinity levels and thus changing the preferred open vegetation, providing more predator opportunities.  Along with the Willamette Valley and other areas of SW Washington, we provide wintering habitat, which FWS manages for the Duskies.

Although the spring crescendo of bird song will soon come to us, there is a time of quiet that settles on the River S when the Cacklers leave and their yelping chorus is but a memory.  Cackling Geese, Branta hutchinsii minima, the smallest subspecies of the cackler species, migrate to breed in western Alaska in a narrow fringe along the coast, mainly between the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers. Their large wintering numbers in the Willamette Valley and lower Columbia River occurred as the population rebounded from the low numbers of the 1980s.  They peaked about the turn of the century when there were 200,000 cacklers in the greater area. Since then, the population has experienced a downward trend again which has been noticeable from our recent goose counts on the refuge.

Taverner’s Cackling Goose, Branta hutchinsii taverneri, breeds on Alaska’s Arctic plain from the Seward Peninsula through Alaska’s North Slope and east into the Yukon. Those breeding in western Alaska winter predominantly in western Washington and Oregon while those breeding to the east migrate east of the Rocky Mountains.  The Taverner is the largest of the Cackling subspecies. Their numbers here in winter are small compared to the minima subspecies. They are often seen in smaller flocks, sometimes mixed with the Lesser Canada Goose, or along the edges of a mass of cacklers feeding on grasses.  They can be differentiated from minima by an obvious size difference and sometimes the bill shape.

However, Taverner’s are hard to separate from the similar Lesser Canada Goose, Branta canadensis parvipes. This subspecies is the smallest of the Canada Goose group.  For the Refuge goose counts, we identify the two subspecies together as Tav/Lesser as the sizes, coloring, bill, head shape, and dimensions are very hard to distinguish and compare in the field. Sometimes they will mix in a small flock. The Lesser Canada breeds throughout the boreal region from central Alaska all the way across Canada.  The Lesser’s wintering ground stretches from western Washington south and east to parts of Colorado and Oklahoma and northern Baja California.  It will be interesting to see specifically where ours breed when the collaring program starts in earnest.

A fourth subspecies, the Aleutian Cackling Goose (Branta hutchinsii leucopareia), breeds in the central and western Aleutian Islands and the Semidi Islands, migrates down the Oregon coast and winters predominantly in California’s Central Valley, with smaller numbers along the northern California coast. Occasionally, and usually in November and March/April, we will find a couple wandering among the cackler flocks. They stand out as they have a large white band of feathers separating the black head and the brown body, completely circling the neck.  Some other small geese have incomplete and thin white bands around their necks which can be seen most easily when they bend their neck down, but these are usually minima.

That brings us to the Western Canada Goose, Branta canadensis moffitti .  We see the big guys all year round.  Is it the same ones?  Who knows.  In winter, when the goose counters are out looking, they can be found in different parts of the refuge in small groups feeding and resting together in the fields or on the lakes, occasionally with some Duskies nearby.  But in summer, the pairs go off to find an appropriate nest site.  Tucking back into the reeds or on the dikes with high grasses, sometimes you only see one.  There should be some goslings popping out now in fact.  In the photo below, sitting on a tussock in the middle of Rest Lake is a nicely protected spot for a nest.  Without doing some kind of collaring or banding study, we really can’t say if they migrated in to nest or not.  With the creation of communities with lakes and adjoining lawns, its an offer many Canada Geese can’t refuse as they increasingly become permanent residents in some parts of the country. It’s a build it and

they will come situation. Do the ones here find the habitat so compelling they just stay?  Maybe some of them do. We sit right on the boundary of year-round residents and breeding birds according to the maps in e-bird.  Certainly, there is an ebb and flow of Canada Geese on the Refuge.  We do see flyovers in the spring and fall so migration affects us but whether it is partial or total change over of individuals, we don’t know.

Now is the time to see who is coming from the south.  Will the Black Phoebe populations recover from our deep freeze weather this winter?  Will birds move in late for breeding as some did for wintering?  Will we have weather events that can stall or push migration?  Visits to the River S during April can help you answer those questions.  Come see for yourself.

-Susan Setterberg, Contact Station Volunteer