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Lesson 3: Geese of the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta- Should Do ✴️

Which Geese are the Most Common Along the Coast of Western Alaska?

Geese of the Yukon Delta Student Handout

Objectives: 

  • Name the four most common geese found in coastal marshes in Western Alaska
  • Explain why coastal marshes make good summer breeding grounds for these four geese
  • Describe the habitat requirements and ecological relationships for each  of the four geese found in Western Coastal Marshes

Materials:

Directions and Activities:

  1. Test your knowledge of coastal geese by taking the quiz “Who Am I?
  2. Create a Fact Sheet/Poster that describes the Ecology of one type of goose found in Western Alaska. Include these items. Use the links on the web resource page to find information on your bird. Use tools suggested by your teacher to create your poster/fact sheet.
  • What does your goose look like?
  • What does your goose eat?
  • Create a food chain that includes your goose
  • Create a food web for your goose
  • Draw/create a map with the location where the birds spend there winters and summers.
  • Describe what the habitat look like in the birds winter area? What do the birds eat in the winter?
  • Describe what the habitat look like in the birds summer area? What do the birds eat in the summer?
  • Name 5 interesting facts about this bird?
  1. Share your goose fact sheet with your classmates . Use these sheets to quiz each other on goose ecology.
A baby Pacific Black Brant gosling feeds on sedge plants. Goslings prefer tender short plants with new growth.

Alaska’s Wetlands are critical to migrating birds. Wetlands along Alaska’s coast are extremely productive areas where nutrients from the land flow down to the sea and nutrients from the sea are brought inland by the tides. Coastal Wetlands are important feeding, resting, and nesting habitats for astonishing numbers of migratory birds. Five of the six species of North American geese nest and migrate through Alaska. Geese time their arrival so that their new chicks have plenty of nutritious young plant growth to help them develop. The arctic plants help both young and old geese fatten for their fall migration south.

Geese and swans mate for life; they molt (replace their feathers) only once a year; and the male guards the nest and helps the female care for the young. They are adapted for walking on land and for grazing on vegetation. Ducks on the other hand mate only for a single season, each year going through elaborate courtship rituals. The male leaves the female once she begins to sit on the eggs and thereafter has nothing to do with her or her young.

Four Most common geese
The Greater White Fronted Goose, Cackling Goose, Pacific Black Brant and Emperor Goose are the most common species in Western Alaskan Coastal Marshes

Geese migrate in a Vee
 or cluster
 formation at 
about 50 mph. Their movement is steady and unhurried and closely follows the movements of the seasons. Geese migrate along four different flyways (Pacific, Central, Mississippi, and Atlantic), which are generalized migration pathways. Geese make their spring migration (south to north) from February to April. Fall migrations (north to south) occur from September to December. Some birds use only the Pacific Flyway while others cross or use all four North American Flyways. Although species’ actual migrations do not strictly conform to these flyways, they are a useful way of generalizing migration routes.

Birds from all of the North American Flyways migrate to and from Alaska

Bird banding allows researchers to study migratory birds routes. Through recovery and sightings of bird bands, researchers can determine which flyways are being used, as well as how long migration takes. From bird band returns biologists have discovered that during spring migration birds make more stopovers as they follow improving weather northward. In fall, the birds wait and move south all at once to good weather.

The U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service Bird
Banding Laboratory in Laurel,
 Maryland maintains a record
 of all bird bands in the United
 States. All researchers must
 obtain permits from the Bird 
Banding Laboratory in order
 to embark on a bird-marking 
project. Marked birds must have a silver colored U.S. Fish and Wildlife band with an 8 or 9 digit number. This number and all information about the bird–such as sex, age, weight, condition, date, and place of banding–are on file at the Bird. Sometimes colored neck bands are used to help  locate birds during airplane surveys.

If you find a banded bird and can read any or all of the numbers on the bands or the neck collar, you should contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and they will forward the information to the Bird Banding Laboratory. The laboratory staff will look up the numbers and contact the biologists who initiated the study. The biologists will then use the information that you gave them about the circumstances in which you saw the bird in their studies. The laboratory will also let you know when and where the bird was banded. You can also report birds or read reports at ebird.org.

Project:
The four geese highlighted on this page are the most common in the coastal marshes of the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta in the summer.  Where do these birds spend their winters? What do the eat? What brings these geese back to the coastal marshes every summer? Create a Fact Sheet/Poster that describes the Ecology of one type of goose found in Western Alaska. Include these items. Use the links on the web resource page to find information on your bird. Use tools suggested by your teacher to create your poster/fact sheet.

Resource Links:
Emperor Goose
Pacific Black Brant

References:

Alaska Wetlands and Wildlife Curriculum, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, available at “http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=curricula.awc“.

Image 2 – https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Waterfowlflywaysmap.png

Image 3 bird band – https://flyways.us/sites/all/themes/fbg/images/full-band.jpg

Image 3 Banding Together USFWS – https://flic.kr/p/eemyRB