GENorkus wrote:
DO NOT FEED THEM AS MUCH!!! Make them want to migrate.
the canada geese that winter here appeared over a period of time since hardly any one hunts ducks or geese any more. when i was 15 in 1956 you never seen a canada goose close enough to shoot , if you did it wouldent be flying it would be dying . but since 1965 you started to see the odd flock in middle of winter , then more and more each year untell you had thousands staying in parks eating worms in ball fields , on beaches in winter and summer among the crowds of people .if people would be shooting them like they did in the early years they would still be migrating .
the experts say they come from the few who dident fly south , and stayed here and built them selves in to the masses we see every summer and winter now a days , its all to do with no one hunting them ,
Being from Michigan, you should know that in general, if there is a good food supply, many birds will stay until the last moment. Sometimes that's too long!
There have been times when birds have stayed in a northern area because food was plentiful. Then a big snow storm in the states south of them hit. It killed off the food supply. The end result was that the birds who couldn't migrate a long enough distance fast enough ended up starving to death or it drastically thinned the flock out.
In the case of many Canada Geese (that people feed all winter), they stayed but they can survive the winter, Hummers can't. I used to live just North of Detroit, MI where, to this day, they have a flock of Canada Geese that I was told, did not even know how to migrate South. That was words from a naturalist not a common person like most of us.
Enjoy the birds during the normal season but don't try to modify Mother Nature. Some birds will stay too long and get trapped.
DO NOT FEED THEM AS MUCH!!! Make them want to migr... (
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