urbpan | 365 Urban Species #060: Domestic Goose

Urban Species #060: Domestic goose Anser anser, and A. cygnoides

According to the Friends of the White Geese, "A worker at the MWRA water pumping station near the Boston University Bridge brought a small group [of domestic geese] to the river in the early 1980s as guard animals when the plant's guard dog died. " The descendants of that small group, and possibly some other released farm geese added later by private citizens, still live on the bank of the Charles today. Around a hundred geese, a mixture of European (Anser anser) and Asian (Anser cygnoides) breeds live there full time, joined in the winter by another hundred or so Canada geese and mallards. The domestic geese breed and appear to interbreed, with one another and perhaps the Canada geese (!) The flock of geese is fed by local residents, who have also named them, and report unusual deaths and injuries to the "Friends" site above (though the site seems to be less active lately).

Geese have been domesticated for a very long time. They are useful as food animals, for their eggs and down, and as their use by Water Department authorities attests, as guard animals. They are territorial, loud, and will bite. European geese are derived from graylag geese, which resemble the colored goose in the photo above, but are somewhat less heavily built. Asian geese are derived from swan geese, which can be recognized by the bulb at the base of their bill (there are no geese in the flock with the natural coloration of the wild swan goose--all the Asian geese in the flock are white.) EDIT: comment below corrects this parenthetical statement.