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Canada Goose | Branta canadensis

Canadese gans | Barnacla canadiense

The Canada Goose is no native here but a North American gamebird released in New Zealand in 1905, where it has become the country's commonest goose. It is named at once by the black head and neck with a white chinstrap set on a light brown, finely barred body. In Australia it has never gained a foothold.

Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) — Photo: Randy Everette — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Voice

Loud and far-carrying, and usually the first sign that geese are coming. The call is a ringing two-note ah-honk, higher and shorter from the female; a flock overhead produces a steady ragged clamour. On the ground there is soft muttering between grazing birds, and in threat a long low hiss with the neck held out.

No freely licensed recording has been found for this species yet; what to listen for is described below.

Identification

Eighty-five to ninety-five centimetres and four and a half to five and a half kilos — a very large goose, heavier than European birds of the same species. Head, neck, bill, legs and feet are black, with a sharply cut white band running from the throat onto the cheek. The body is light brown with fine barring on breast and belly, the rump black with a white U above it, and the undertail coverts white. The female is clearly smaller than the male but otherwise alike. In flight the shape is long and heavy, with slow beats and the neck held straight out.

Confusion species

Greylag Goose (Anser anser) is the only other goose regularly met on the same paddock in New Zealand: grey, or white and pied, with an orange bill and orange legs, and entirely without the black neck and white chinstrap. Paradise Shelduck (Tadorna variegata) is much smaller, the female white-headed and the male black-headed, and shows a large white wing panel in flight. Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is darker at distance and far longer in the neck. In Australia any Canada Goose is an escape from a park or waterfowl collection, not a wild bird.

Habitat

Short-grazed pasture beside open water is the picture: farmland along lakes and large ponds, from the lowlands up into the mountain valleys. It is wholly herbivorous with a marked preference for the sugar-rich bases of short grasses, along with clovers, legumes and marginal water plants. In summer groups move far into the hills, up into alpine country and the braided river valleys of the Southern Alps; outside the breeding season they gather on the big high-country lakes.

Where the bird is most often found, arranged by main group and formation.

Range and movements

Within this map window, New Zealand only, with some sixty thousand birds, two-thirds of them on the South Island. There it is widespread on farmland along the Southern Alps and on the high-country lakes of Canterbury and Otago; on the North Island the strongholds are the Wairarapa, Hawke's Bay and the Waikato. It is not established in Australia: what is seen there are escapes from waterfowl collections. Since establishment the species has spread steadily, from the first fifty birds to the present population.

Resident
dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

The map is a density field, not a drawn range boundary: it is built from the records themselves and therefore does not follow state borders. The seasonal colour comes from the arrangement per state, the depth of colour from the records of GBIF (2006-2026), counted per 0,7° cell and divided by all bird records in that same cell, so that the density of birdwatchers does not count. Country outlines: Natural Earth (public domain).

Where and when to look

In autumn and winter drive the high-country lakes of Canterbury and Otago and scan the grass along the shore; the flocks are large and not shy. On a passing skein, look for the black neck with the white chinstrap — at any range that is the surest mark, even against the sky. In summer moulting, temporarily flightless groups sit on back-country lakes, unwilling to leave the water.

Conservation

Least Concern (LC) worldwide, but the birds here are an introduced stock rather than a natural one. The species came to New Zealand as game in 1905, with an importation of fifty birds of the large maxima type. Protected under the Wildlife Act of 1953 the population grew to about forty thousand on the South Island by 1996 and further after that. Farmers were complaining of pasture damage as early as 1925, and because control shooting fell short the goose was stripped of protected status in 2011 and placed on a par with sparrows and pigeons; it may now be controlled without a permit. Alongside this weigh disturbance of breeding waders in the braided river valleys and the bird-strike risk near airfields.

Scientific name

Branta canadensis | (Linnaeus, 1758)

Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Anas canadensis, in the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae; because it later moved to Branta, author and year stand in parentheses. The genus Branta was introduced by Scopoli in 1769 and is a Latinised form of Old Norse brandgas, 'burnt goose', that is 'black goose'. canadensis means 'of Canada'; the type locality is Canada, for which Todd in 1938 proposed the city of Quebec. The Maori name kuihi is used both for this goose and for Greylag Goose.