The Town of Saugeen Shores is wrapping up a pilot project using birds of prey to deter geese from hanging around the harbour area in Port Elgin.
Parks and Facilities Manager Frank Burrows says over the last two weeks, Owner of Imperial Falconry Services Inc. Michael Thibert has been using birds to scare geese away from the walking paths around the harbour.
He says like many waterfront communities, there is a sizable Canada Goose population in the area.
“Northshore Park, the Port Elgin Harbour and Port Elgin Main Beach have a lot of geese, particularly around the harbour and leave a lot of poop behind and it creates obviously some water quality issues with that, some of our walkways are just covered with poop debris from the geese,” says Burrows.
To help clear out the geese from these public spaces, the Town has been experimenting with ways to reduce the number of geese in a humane way.
“We have tried fencing to discourage them from coming up on the parkland, we have tried planting shrubs and trees because generally the birds don’t like the shrubs and trees, and chasing them with people and just trying to make it a less attractive place for the geese to come in, but we are still getting lots of geese,” says Burrows.
He says another technique is also using of birds of prey to deter geese. To assist with this, the municipality brought on Thibert and his Harris Hawks for the pilot, which perched on posts along the harbour walkways, scaring them from the area.
“It’s an easy way to discourage the geese from hanging around. We are experimenting with this to see how it’s working, to see if it is applicable to the Port Elgin Harbour and Northshore Park area,” says Burrows.
He says from his observations, the geese were not a fan of the birds and had moved away from the area.
“Using falconry and trained dogs are techniques that have been successful in some areas that I am aware of. It is quite a specialized service, so it is very hard to find contractors that are qualified and licensed to do this. It was quite fortunate this company was in the region and we made connection and it worked out very nicely,” says Burrows.
After wrapping up the pilot over the weekend, Burrows says they will analyze how successful the pilot was and potentially move on to future phases.