Counting geese: Oceanside’s favourite feathered visitors

Bredbergsaid she is hopeful to finish off this year’s count with extra high numbers. Photo courtesy of Liz Bredberg

Every spring, the Oceanside area gets visited by travelling birds stopping off on the coast of Vancouver Island to rest their wings. 

While mainly using the coastal shores as a pit stop during their migration, the feathered fowl are a landmark for the area.

The black brant (Branta bernicla) is a small sea goose which breeds in the Arctic and usually spends the winter in the Mexican state of Baja California.

During their migration from Mexico to the Arctic, the geese are known to spend time on the West coast of Canada, where they rest and feed on local eelgrass.

To survey the number of brant geese that visit the area, volunteers take part of the annual brant geese count. These volunteers once a week survey different parts of the Parksville and Qualicum Beach shoreline to observe and count the number of brant geese. 

The brant count runs from the start of the birds' migrating season around the end of February until the last goose is counted, which can last until May.

CHLY spent the day with the volunteers, going to select locations to search for the geese, then after met with Liz Bredberg, who is the director of the brant goose count.

Bredberg started volunteering and directing the brant count three years ago after moving to Parksville. That day, Bredberg’s group surveyed Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park, where they saw over a thousand brant.

She said she has had a long interest in birds and bird watching since she was a little girl.

“I actually was even interested in birds when I was a kid, because somewhere in amongst all of the stuff from my childhood, there's an essay I wrote for must have been junior high school called Life in a Bird Sanctuary, and it was not a bird sanctuary, it was my folks place,” Bredberg said. “They had lots of trees with berries and stuff in them, and I would almost go out and watch them and see what they were up to, and count them, and then I wrote about it.”

She points out that the brants have become such well-known birds in the area that every year since the ‘90s Parksville hosts the Brant Wildlife Festival, celebrating the bird and highlighting the other biodiversity in the area. 

Even before moving to Parksville and taking part in the count, Bredberg would travel from Vancouver to attend the festival every year.

Bredberg said about 30 people volunteer with the count. 

She said many of the volunteers are bird watchers, and the brant geese migrations happen at the same of the herring spawns, leading to birds of all types flocking to coastal shores around the time the count happens.

“So it's a really interesting time for observing all manner of natural things. We get the herring spawn, we get all of those sea lions, we get an assortment of birds,” she said. “The Eagles are terrifically happy with the whole thing–it's hard to know whether an eagle is happy, but they really do chow down very thoroughly.”

While this year’s count isn’t finalized, Bredberg said the numbers have been wonderful. She said she is hopeful to finish off this year’s count with extra high numbers.

Last year, the group counted over 6,000 brant geese. While the number of geese is on the rise after the count dipped below 4,000 in 2022 and 2023, Bredberg said there is no consistency in the dip or rises that the numbers have. She said there’s no proper understanding of why some years there are more geese or why there are fewer.

“We've got a count here of last year of being about 6,000 total throughout the time that they were recording the migration,” she said. “And of course, there are problems in that. Do the brant stick around? Do they move on? Is this the same bunch that we counted last week, and if so, what does that tell us? It doesn't tell us much about volumes.”

Bredberg also said disturbances from dogs during migration season are a big part of why the geese might not want to land in the Parksville area

One idea for why the geese might be hanging around more this year is the recent rise in herring spawning on the coast. While the brants are primarily vegetarian and don’t eat herring, Bredberg explained that the geese like to eat the eelgrass that the herring eggs are laid on, giving the brant extra nutrients.

But loss of habitat is still a key factor in the decrease of the geese, Bredberg said. She also said disturbances from dogs during migration season are a big part of why the geese might not want to land in the Parksville area.

“There are signs all over the place that say dogs must not even be on the beach at this time,” she said. “We had three of them out there today in our area, and it's very hard to address that problem.”

According to the City of Parksville, all Parksville beaches within the Parksville-Qualicum Beach Wildlife Management Area are closed to all dogs from March 1 to April 30. As well as from February 15 to April 30 at Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park.

“The problem is that dogs look to brant a good deal like Arctic foxes. The area where the brant nest have Arctic foxes, and Arctic foxes like to prey on brant nests. They eat the eggs, they eat the chicks, they eat the brant,” she said. “So the brants are terrified of anything that looks like an Arctic fox. So if you're walking the dog along the beach, the brant look at it and go, ‘oh my God,’ and they fly off. If they're not well fed yet, that terror flight burns an awful lot of energy, and they may not survive.”

Since she has started volunteering with the brant count, Bredberg admits that while it sounds silly, she has really bonded with the birds.

“Last week, there was quite a high tide at one of the areas, and all of the brant were really close. It was an amazing experience to watch them and film them. I was blown away,” she said. “I was just doing it for fun–it wasn't any formal count or anything–I just thought, ‘oh, let's go see what the brant are up to’ and there they all were. It's a thrill.”

To learn more about the brant geese count and the Arrowsmith Naturalists, see their website at arrowsmithnats.org.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.