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> Snow Geese in Alaska, Snow Geese across the North Slope
Joseph Skin
post Sep 14 2005, 10:36 PM
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Sup,

In general, how many snow geese do you think you saw all together?
isn't it awesome looking over all those flocks of geese? I think it would be awesome to tag all those, but how do you guys take care of them, without all the violent biting anc clawing? how do you guys calm them all down? I think it would be a pretty difficult task, dealing with terrified, (featherless?) snow geese.
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Leslie_Pierce
post Sep 18 2005, 12:34 AM
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Hi Joe!

We captured about 1400 snow geese. We flew over more groups of geese though. So, maybe about 2000 geese that we saw altogether.
It is DEFINITELY awesome seeing all of the geese! I loved being out there on the Ikpikpuk and Piasuk River deltas. If this sounds like the kind of work you'd be interested in doing, you should try to get a summer job with the Wildlife Department!

Well, as far as taking care of the geese, the biologists do several things. First, they try not to push them too hard while herding them towards the pot. They don't want them to be totally exhausted. The helicopter pilot was very good at pushing a little and then backing off and letting them rest a little.

Then, once the birds are in the pot, we try to move slowly around them and to stay quiet to keep them calm. Moving a few birds into the smaller, inside pot helps also. That way only a few birds are getting excited at one time and there is less chance of them trampling each other. As the birds are picked up, we were careful to keep their feathers aligned so they wouldn't get torn or damaged. The birds are not totally featherless, but they are growing in new long flight feathers on their wings that they will need to migrate back to the wintering grounds. We also try to tuck their heads back so they cannot bite us and hold their legs down so they cannot kick and claw us. If one of their claws catches on part of our shirts or jackets, they could rip off the claw. So, we try to avoid that as well.

Keeping a firm grip on them seems to help calm them down. I tried to talk nicely to them, too!

Thanks for the great questions!
Ms Pierce
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