Seasonal Biology and Behavior

During February and March, introduce harassment techniques to keep the resident geese off of the greens, tees and lawn areas before nesting begins. Between mid-February and mid-March, they pair up, nest and seek ample and safe access to both loafing areas (short grass) and water for use in spring and summer while molting and raising goslings.

During April through May, the geese will nest and have their young. Once goslings are hatched, they are taken to the water within a day. During this period of time as well as all other times of the year, we need to control migrant geese from dropping in and joining the flock.

During June and July, harassment is used to keep molting adults and goslings from grazing on greens and tees. Adult geese will not leave flightless goslings unattended in April, May and June and become flightless themselves in late June and July when primary flight feathers are molted.

During August, September, October, November ,December and January, we use harassment to discourage the fall stopovers during migration. The geese that have resided at your property all summer may be joined for a month or so by migrating cousins. Persistent harassment will ease this temporary influx.

We now practice the measures and practices of an organization called called GeesePeace  http://www.geesepeace.org/ .  This national organization has deep experience with mitigating the conflict between geese and humans.   A GeesePeace graph shows the seasonal activity of geese in the North East http://www.geesepeace.org/geeseseasons.html .