Yes we are talking about the Canadian Geese, sure it is nice to see wild life come to the pond but these fowl’s can really foul up a pond. Not only do they leave behind plenty of fertilizer for the pond but when they head out to see other ponds and areas to socialize they can also bring with them more more of what we don’t want…such as invasive weeds, fish eggs, frog and toad eggs and what ever that stick to their feet can come traveling to our pond plus what they may have eaten then deposited at your pond.
Keeping these geese from making your pond their new home can be very tedious due to their obstinate and persistent behavior. No matter how many times you go out and chase them of the pond they’ll be back.
Even worse is when they have already nested on your pond, now they think it is their new home and will be back each year to nest again. And it is even worse on the persistent nature. For years we’ve been able to keep them off the property and a the ponds but one winter lasted longer than it should have and we couldn’t get the fountain in due to the ice, ad they built a nest, had 7 little goslings and moved on. Well same thing this year ice, snow and cold has kept us from getting the fountain in and they had started building a nest. 
Let’s back up a little before the first nesting. We used the coyote decoy and the swan decoy plus the fountain and it did keep them off the pond. Once they did nest the first time we through everything at them but they wouldn’t leave because of the young ones. Worse is they had gotten used to the fountain and the decoys, so they really don’t work now.
Back to this year and they first nest they built right in the same spot as last year, which was easy to find. So I removed the nesting materials that day and came back the following day to find another nest and every day after that. Each time the nest kept getting smaller since I removed the nesting material from the area they were building with. They seemed to get smarter and started three to 4 nest in a day, each one rather small but still none the less persistent in the building.
I finally woke up and burned the dried weeds and plants along the shore line a raked up any tall weeds I cut down from the fall cleanup so there was no nesting material they could use. This seemed to have kept them from staying at the pond 24/7 and slowly stayed away for a few weeks now. I do see them from time to time and they do leave when chased off.
A quick note on the burning of weeds and plants, this is a good way to reduce the ass of plant that would end up in the pond decaying in the pond. We leave the bulrush alone all winter so when spring hits we have some erosion control in the spring until the new growth starts. Burning down or cutting back the dead stuff helps to keep the nutrients the plant did up take out of the pond.
Stay tuned and we’ll keep you posted on the geese situation, please check out our last years posts for more on geese. Or just type geese in the search field for even more.
Pond Geese Report
Spring arrived at WhatPond
Pond Geese
