A Canada goose, tagged in Departure Bay in 2016, was recently spotted in Chicago. The sighting is extremely unusual for the primarily north-south migratory bird. (Dreamstime)

By Alex Rawnsley

GOLDEN GOOSE

‘It’s really a mystery:’ Nanaimo-tagged Canada goose spotted in Chicago

Jan 30, 2022 | 7:37 AM

NANAIMO — Why did the chicken cross the road?

No-one knows, but the bigger question for VIU biologists with a focus on banding, tagging and tracking local Canada geese is why did the goose cross the continent?

Eric Demers, chair of the university’s biology department, told NanaimoNewsNOW the sighting of a bird they tagged in 2016 in Departure Bay, showing up last October in Chicago, some 3,000 kilometres away, is extremely unusual.

“How did it get there? Is it part of a migration it’s doing? We really don’t know, this is the one sighting we’ve had. Did it have difficulty in its orientation or did it get picked up by another flock? It’s really a mystery.”

It’s nearly impossible to know the reason why the bird found its way to the windy city.

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The prevailing theories include it chasing a food source, it joined a new flock or the bird was picked up over the Rockies by a storm.

Until October, the last tagged bird to venture over the Rockies was found in Fort McMurray after being shot by a hunter.

Students and staff at VIU tagged around 400 geese in 2016 and 2017 and have collected data on their patterns ever since.

The birds were tagged in June, when geese malt their wing feathers and become essentially flightless for a short period of time. These particular animals are known to frequent Nanaimo tend to stay within 40 kilometres of the city.

“Most geese tend to stay local and when they do move so far, most of the movement has been on a north-south axis,” Demers said.

Of the birds being tracked, which leave the central Island bubble, most venture only as far as Victoria or the Lower Mainland.

Only around 10 to 15 per cent get as far south as Washington state or Oregon.

Demers said if they were to tag more birds, they would select ones which arrive in the area at a different time of the year which would typically be animals with a longer migratory track.

The VIU bird banding program tags and tracks a variety of species in a bid to better understand their movements, patterns and human impacts on their behaviours.

More on the program is available through their Facebook page.

Join the conversation. Submit your letter to NanaimoNewsNOW and be included on The Water Cooler, our letters to the editor feature.

alex@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @alexrawnsley