Scientists Teaching Geese to Migrate

If you happened to look up at the Virginia sky one morning last December, you might have noticed an odd sight: 10 Canada geese honking and flapping in crates suspended from a helium balloon.

The geese were not learning how to fly — they already knew that. They were supposed to be studying the ground below them so they could remember the route when spring came.

While small birds like robins and warblers know their traditional migration routes by instinct, large birds like geese have to be taught them. Although Canada geese are not endangered, the 10 geese were part of an experiment aimed at helping threatened species like trumpeter swans and whooping cranes to learn migration routes. When threatened species are reintroduced to a new area, it can take several seasons — and many deaths — for them to figure out the new migration route on their own. Teaching them could save time and lives.

"What we're trying to do is teach them a safe, predetermined migration route of our choice," said wildlife researcher William Sladen. "They can learn passively by just looking out."

Continuing the Work of 'Father Goose'

Sladen is director of Environmental Studies at Airlie, a research center in northern Virginia that is home to scores of swans and other waterfowl. The balloon flight was only his latest attempt to teach birds to migrate. He had earlier worked with Canadian sculptor Bill Lishman, who pioneered such flights using powered hang gliders known as microlights.

Lishman, who is known as "Father Goose," was the first human being ever to lead a flock of geese on a migration route. He developed a technique in which he raised young geese to identify with him as their parent, then used the bond to make them follow him when he took to the air in a microlight.

At his home in Ontario, Canada, Lishman first hatched geese in an incubator. Then he relied on a natural phenomenon called "imprinting," in which recently hatched birds believe the first moving object they see is their parent. The bond was strong enough that they would fly behind his microlight for hundreds of miles, tracing migration routes to the south.