Canada Goose

How to recognise it

• Black head and neck with a white chinstrap reaching from the throat to behind the eyes
• The black neck is sharply divided from the grey breast
• Beige-brown belly and flanks with clear bars, darker grey-brown back
• White rump, blackish-grey tail, grey-black bill and feet, sexes alike

Call and song

The typical call is a nasal, two-syllable “år-lytt”, with the second syllable almost rising into falsetto. It calls especially often in flight. Agitated or territorial geese often start a confrontation with a loud hiss.

Where and when

The Canada Goose is a partial migrant that breeds in Sweden, also in bogs with larger open water. It is reported all year round and from all 21 counties. Birds from northern Sweden move to the North Sea and Baltic coasts, and many northern European Canada Geese winter around Denmark, the Netherlands and Poland. In northern places where water is kept open artificially, it often stays for the winter.

Food and behaviour

It eats mainly grass, other plants and their roots, sometimes small insects and fish. When grazing water plants it lifts its rear out of the water to reach deeper. Outside the breeding season it lives in large flocks, where some geese keep watch while the others graze. It flies in a characteristic V formation, and many are half tame, living in parks and ponds near people.