Are geese making Columbia their year around home?

   

      Twenty years ago I became used to seeing migrating Canadian geese stopping over in tilled farmland at the end of Oakland Mills Road. For a two week period of time in March and October you could count thousands of geese in the field.  Then they would disappear.  That land has now been developed into the Ecker Hollow community of homes.
     The past few years it seems as if the Canadian geese we have around Columbia have become year round guests.  Go to any of our lakes at this time of year and you will have to walk around geese with their young.  As they seem to have taken up permanent residence here will we have to stop calling then Canadian geese and start referring to them as Columbian geese?  Seems that Columbia has more attraction than northern Canada in summer and the Carolinas in winter.  I wonder if global warming has anything to do with this change.

     Unfortunately this goose population has caused the problem of goose droppings around our lake paths.  The Columbia Association a few years ago hired border collie dogs to chase away the geese at Lake Kittamaqundi.  More recently flags on the dock at Lake Kittamaqundi has been used to keep them off the dock.