Tough Birds Winter at Idaho’s Deer Flat Refuge

Huge flocks of big brown-back, black-head, white-cheek Canada geese migrate hundreds, often thousands of miles in V-formations during winter from Canada to the southern United States and Mexico.

Not so for 7,000 of the honkers that make up a local population of Canada geese on this 11,585-acre federal refuge in southwestern Idaho.

Life is so easy for these birds they stay put.

The geese summer on 86 tiny, flat, irregularly shaped islands along a 110-mile stretch of the Snake River south of Boise to the Oregon state line. They winter nearby at seven-mile-long, half-mile-wide Lake Lowell.

The extent of migration for these Idaho Canada geese is as little as five miles, no more than 70 miles.

The 86 islands, all named and varying in size from one-fourth acre to 70 acres, are strictly for the birds. The islands were set aside for the protection and preservation of the Deer Flat Canada geese population and for other birds flying through by an executive order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939.

The Lake Lowell sector of the Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge was established by an executive order of President Theodore Roosevelt.

It was Teddy Roosevelt who established the first national wildlife refuge in 1903 at Florida’s Pelican Island to protect egrets, herons and other birds. Today the Deer Flat refuge is one of 437 wildlife refuges in the United States.

Todd Fenzl, 40, assistant manager of the refuge, and other staff members here are preparing 125 artificial nests on the Snake River islands for the geese.

They sail to the islands in 16-foot aluminum boats carrying three bales of straw for each nest. The artificial nests are four-feet-by-three-feet wooden platforms 3 1/2 feet off the ground near the water’s edge.

“Flood waters can wipe out the eggs or the goslings nesting naturally in the wild grass on these islands. To make sure the local Canada geese population never becomes seriously depleted we maintain the artificial platforms,” Fenzl said.

“The goose in the box (artificial nest) provides an insurance against high water and guarantees goslings every year.”

When the platforms are undermined and knocked over by ice jams on the Snake River, new ones are erected. Some nesting structures last several years.

Off-Limits for Humans

Posted signs warn that all of the islands are off-limits to humans from Jan. 31 through May 31 because of the nesting activities of the Canada geese.

“By the first week of March the eggs are either hatched out or destroyed by predators, mainly magpies,” Fenzl said.

The average clutch is four eggs. Sometimes the goose will have as many as seven eggs in a nest. Most broods are off the nest by the second week of April.

Geese will not nest on islands overrun with willow thickets. Fish and wildlife personnel burn the willow shrubs on those islands to spur the growth of wild grass ideal for nesting.

Fenzl and his colleagues also operate farms for the birds. Barley and alfalfa are grown on six of the islands solely for the geese and other migratory wild fowl. The birds also feed on residue stubble from nearby wheat, corn, alfalfa, barley, potato and sugar beet farms.

The 86 Snake River islands stretching from Walter’s Ferry, Ida., to Farewell Bend, Ore., for centuries were rich hunting and fishing grounds for Indians.

Many of the islands were farmed from the time of the early settlers through the 1930s. Several abandoned weather-beaten farmhouses and structures still stand, rotting away with the passage of time.

Islands are named after former owners and residents: Blackburn, Dilley, Guffy, Hermit, Larson, Smith, McRae, Suzy and Squatters.

Some are named after wildlife: Goldeneye Gosling, Pheasant, Heron, Quail, Beaver, Rabbit, Jackass and Goat. Others have names like Scarecrow, Cigar, Silo, Ketchup, Poison Ivy and Rhubarb.

Ducks and Eagles

The wildlife refuge hosts several hundred thousand birds that fly through during the year, including mallards, pintail, teal, wood ducks, mergansers, shovelers, bald and golden eagle, osprey, hawks. Fenzl said the sky was black with mallards “until cold weather arrived and things began freezing. The mallards flew south to California’s Central Valley. You would think they would tell the geese, ‘Hey you guys, it’s a lot better south of here.’

“But these local geese are tough birds. They hang around Lake Lowell when they’re not out on the islands, standing on the ice of the frozen lake pruning their feathers. They stand there for hours with one foot on the ice and one foot in the air. You would think they would freeze that foot glued to the ice.”

About 2,000 Canada geese migrating from Alberta, heading south, winter over with the local population each year, while the rest of the flocks from the north continue on to California, Arizona and Mexico.

Each year about 1,000 goslings born to the local population survive and about 1,000 of the Deer Flat Canada geese are lost to hunters.