You can't hear the honk of Canada geese from space, but fit them with a lipstick-size transmitter and a wire, and you can track them with satellites.
That's what two biologists are doing with 22 geese they trapped and harnessed with radio transmitters this summer in Greenland and Newfoundland, Canada.
Bruce Batt, chief biologist for Ducks Unlimited, a conservation organization dedicated to protecting waterfowl habitat, is working with Cornell University biologist Richard Malecki to track the migration patterns of the Atlantic Flyway Canada geese.
"Those particular birds we don't know a whole lot about," Batt said. "This is really like the last frontier in our field, because we know these birds go somewhere but we don't know where."
Scientists estimate the geese migrate some 2,000 miles from their northern nesting grounds all the way to the eastern coast of the United States, spending the winter somewhere on grounds somewhere between Maine and North Carolina. Batt and Malecki are eager to find out where the geese go so that the birds can be better managed and protected.
There are two populations of Canada geese along the East Coast: migratory and residential birds. The two are almost indistinguishable to look at, but have very different lifestyles. The migratory fowl, are rare, they spend their summers near the Arctic Circle, and fly south for the winter. The residential geese stay at southern latitudes year-round, and are so plentiful as to be pests in many areas, Batt said.
By understanding when and where the migratory birds move each year, wildlife managers can protect the migratory population by establishing appropriate refuges and scheduling hunting season when they will not be harmed, he said.
Outfitting the birds with the high-tech transmitters and tracking them for 18 months will cost nearly $4,000 per goose, Batt said. While it may seem expensive, the price is actually less than the cost of banding 1,000 or 2,000 birds in the summer nesting grounds, Batt said.
The typical method of tracking migrations is to capture at least 2,000 birds, attach a numbered band to their legs, then wait until hunters and bird watchers report sightings of banded birds.
The satellite tracking provides much better information, Batt said. "Instead of getting one piece of information when it's banded and one when it's shot, we get detailed information about the bird every three days."
In order to save battery power and prolong the life of the transmitters, the devices are programmed to turn on for eight hours every three days. Those who are eager to watch the migrations can follow their movements over the Internet at the Ducks Unlimited website.
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