North American Canada Goose Habitats: Brown Body, Scraped Nest, White Egg

Summary: North American Canada goose habitats in the United States grow brown bodies from white eggs in scraped-out nests for Canadian summers and Mexican winters.

Canada geese (Branta canadensis) parents with goslings: familiar sights at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where Canada geese return every spring to deliver their offspring; Alameda County, Tri-Valley, Northern California; Wednesday, June 1, 2005, 11:24: U.S. Department of Energy (Energy.gov), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Crop-raided, water-flocked North American Canada goose habitats assuage holiday fare-loving arborists, master gardeners, master naturalists and tree stewards in distribution ranges seasonally in Canada and Mexico and year-round in the United States.

The duck relative in the Anatidae family bears its common name and the same-meaninged scientific name Branta canadensis for the first European-described specimen's discovery in Canada. Hunting, pollution and population control by culling or shaking eggs challenge Canada geese, described in 1756 by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1787). The same challenges dog the related, similar-behaving, similar-looking and similar-sounding, but smaller-sized, cackling goose, whose four subspecies display shorter necks, shorter, stubbier bills and sloping foreheads.

Twenty-five-year lifespans expect bogs, coniferous or temperate forests, fields, grasslands, marshes, mudflats, parklands, plains, prairies, rocky cliffs, shores of lakes, ponds, rivers or sloughs and swamps.

April through August furnish opportunities for breeding one two- to 12-egg brood in beaver, hawk or muskrat nests or ground-cover or on ledges, mounds or stumps.

Mothers-to-be gather cattails, grasses, reeds, stems, sticks and twigs into outer, and feathers and gray-brown, pale-tipped, white-centered down into inner, lining for 4-inch- (10.16-centimeter-) deep nests. Nests with inner 7- to 9-inch (17.78- to 22.86-centimeter) and outer 16- to 25-inch (40.64- to 63.5-centimeter) diameters house cream- to beige-white, subelliptical to oval eggs. Fathers-to-be institute 24- to 30-day guard duty while mothers-to-be incubate the 2.83- to 3.42-inch- (72- to 87-millimeter-) long, 1.89- to 2.29-inch- (48- to 58.2-millimeter-) wide eggs.

Bears, coyotes, crows, foxes, gulls, raccoons, ravens, skunks and wolves jeopardize all life stages, including the rough to smooth eggs, in North American Canada goose habitats.

Downy, open-eyed hatchlings know green-brown upper-parts, green-yellow faces, foreheads, necks and under-parts, yellow backs and fronts to wing edges and yellow surrounds to wing-body attachment points.

Quick-functioning blue-gray bills, blue-gray to green feet and legs and strong wings let nestlings fly nine weeks after hatching and live independently by the following spring. Nestlings move, within two to three years of hatching, into physically and sexually mature stages as insect-eating predators of berries, crops, grasses, leaves, sedges and seeds. Adults need algae, aquatic invertebrates, beans, blueberries, corn kernels, crustaceans, grasses, insects, mollusks, mud, nuts, rice, roots, seaweeds, sedges, seeds, silt, skunk cabbage leaves and wheat.

North American Canada goose habitats respectively offer far-north and far-south winter-coldest temperatures at minus 60 and 15 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 51.11 and minus 9.44 degrees Celsius).

Co-parenting by monogamous pairs, playing dead, possessing dappled ground-, overcast sky- and shady water-like colors and pursuing V-patterned flight formations protect flock-based Canada goose life cycles.

Bermuda, eel and salt grasses and corn, rice and wheat fields qualify as camouflage, host-plant vegetation at altitudes through 6,561.68 feet (2,000 meters) above sea level. Habitats black as heads, necks and rumps, brown as sides, upper-parts and wings and white as chin straps, rump patches and under-tails reveal resident Canada geese. Direct, strong flight on 4.25- to 5.5-foot (1.3- to 1.7-meter) wingspans suggests 6.5- to 9.75-pound (3- to 4.4-kilogram), 2.25- to 3.5-foot (0.7- to 1.1-meter) adult geese.

The high-pitched hrink vocalization and the low-pitched bark and honk calls respectively tell of female and male Canada goose populations in North American Canada goose habitats.

Canada geese introductions outside the native North American range include Europe (United Kingdom), Oceania (New Zealand) and South America (Argentina, Chile, Falkland Islands); Canada geese eggs in nest, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, east central England; May 15, 2010: NottsExMiner, CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Canada geese parents with goslings at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Alameda County, Tri-Valley, Northern California; Wednesday, June 1, 2005, 11:24: U.S. Department of Energy (Energy.gov), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canada_geese_at_Lawrence_Livermore_National_Laboratory.jpg; U.S. Department of Energy, United States government work, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/departmentofenergy/9571677230/

Canada geese introductions outside the native North American range include Europe (United Kingdom), Oceania (New Zealand) and South America (Argentina, Chile, Falkland Islands); Canada geese eggs in nest, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, east central England; May 15, 2010: NottsExMiner, CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/nottsexminer/4612761274/

For further information:

Aldrich, John Warren. June 1946. "Branta canadensis moffitti." Wilson Bulletin, vol. 58, no. 2: 96-99.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/52152864

Baicich, Paul J.; and Harrison, Colin J.O. 2005. Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds. Second edition. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, Princeton Field Guides.

Baird, Spencer Fullerton, 1858. "Bernicla leucopareia Cassin. [Branta canadensis occidentalis]." Report of Explorations and Surveys to Ascertain the Most Practical and Economical Route for a Railroad From the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, vol. 9: 766. Washington DC: A.O.P. Nicholson.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/37452557

Cassin, John. October 1852. "Descriptions of New Species of Birds, Specimens of Which Are in the Collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia: 9. Anser parvipes, nobis [Branta canadensis parvipes]." Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, vol. VI (1852, 1853): 187-188. Philadelphia PA: Merrihew & Thompson, 1854.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1779723
Available via HathiTrust @ https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.31822006518377?urlappend=%3Bseq=209

Delacour, Jean Théodore. 12 November 1951. "Preliminary Note on the Taxonomy of Canada Geese, Branta Canadensis: Branta canadensis fulva, new subspecies."  American Museum Novitates, no. 1537: 7-8.
Available via AMNH (American Museum of Natural History) Digital Library @ http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/bitstream/handle/2246/3908//v2/dspace/ingest/pdfSource/nov/N1537.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Delacour, Jean Théodore. 12 November 1951. "Preliminary Note on the Taxonomy of Canada Geese, Branta Canadensis: Branta canadensis maxima, new subspecies." American Museum Novitates, no. 1537: 5-6.
Available via AMNH (American Museum of Natural History) Digital Library @ http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/bitstream/handle/2246/3908//v2/dspace/ingest/pdfSource/nov/N1537.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volumes 8-11, Birds I-IV, edited by Michael Hutchins, Jerome A. Jackson, Walter J. Bock and Donna Olendorf. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group, 2002.

Linnaeus, Carl von. 1758. "9. Anser canadensis." Systema Naturae per Regna Tria Naturae, Secundum Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, cum Characteribus, Differentiis, Synonymis, Locis, Tomus I, Editio Decima, Reformata: 123. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius]
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/727028

Peterson, Alan P., M.D. "Branta canadensis (Linnaeus) 1758." Zoonomen: Zoological Nomenclature Resource > Birds of the World -- Current Valid Scientific Avian Names > Anseriformes > Anatidae > Branta.
Available @ http://www.zoonomen.net/avtax/anse.html

Todd, Walter Edmond Clyde. 1938. "A New Eastern Race of the Canada Goose: Branta canadensis interior subsp. nov." The Auk, vol. 55, issue 4 (October-December): 662.
Available via SORA (Searchable Ornithological Research Archive) @ https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/auk/v055n04/p0661-p0662.pdf