By Nigel Maxwell

Foul weather not for the birds

Apr 17, 2018 | 4:54 PM

Bird watchers across Saskatchewan are noticing lonely pairs of geese seeking to nest on frozen lakes — another effect of a seemingly endless winter.
 
Gerry Letain, a Melfort-based biologist for Ducks Unlimited Canada, said there should be a lot more geese on the landscape than there are.
 
“Some geese some years are already incubating their nests at this time and there won’t be any start of that for quite awhile,” he said.
 
Letain said he remains confident it’s not too late and the birds will find a way to feed. Worst case scenario is the baby geese may just hatch two to three weeks late, he said adding ducks may be the more affected bird by the delayed snow melt. 
 
“If they don’t have a successful go around on the first nesting attempt, you know a second or third attempt they’ll hatch out their birds but they won’t reach the flying stage because there won’t be enough time left in the fall for them,” he said.
 
Letain said the delayed snow melt will definitely make for some tougher feeding conditions for the geese, but he added the birds are very resilient and have a knack for finding enough to survive on.
 
“It’s funny, the birds must have an intuition as to when they should come and when they shouldn’t, I mean Canada Geese are a lot hardier than other migrating water fowl,” he said.
 
 
 
nigel.maxwell@jpbg.ca
 
On Twitter: @nigelmaxwell