Cackling geese wintering at Fort Cobb State Park were recently trapped as part of a multi-state research project led by the Central Flyway Council and Texas A&M University – Kingsville with input from the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. The 37 birds banded and fitted with a GPS collar in Oklahoma will be tracked along with other cackling geese collared in Colorado, Kansas, Texas, and New Mexico.

“This is a collaborative effort with state biologists in the Southern Great Plains,” said Bart Ballard, a research scientist with the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Institute and professor at Texas A&M University – Kingsville. “We’re in our third year of deploying transmitters to track the bird’s movements and are interested in answering questions about their habitat selection and use of urban landscapes.”

Migratory Game Bird Biologist Paxton Smith is eager to learn more from the study, especially as it relates to management of Oklahoma’s waterfowl populations.

“Shifting habitat use is a major topic right now in waterfowl management,” Smith said. “It is important for us to stay on top of these changes not only so we can protect vital wintering grounds but also be able to understand why these shifts are taking place. Having a better understanding of their habitat use will also help effectively monitor their populations.”

In late January, Wildlife Department biologists joined TAMUK researchers at Fort Cobb State Park, a known cackling goose overwintering site. After scouting the area, they arranged nets along the shore of a sheltered cove and attached those nets to a series of launchers that were then connected by a firing wire. The launchers were activated when a large group of birds were within range, and more than 100 geese were caught in the nets.

The study targets female geese with the expectation of learning more about their reproductive success and limiting duplicate information from breeding pairs. With that in mind, male geese were immediately released from the nets and females were placed in holding crates on the shore. Each of these females were then weighed and measured, banded with an aluminum leg band, and released on site.

The first 37 captured females also were fitted with a GPS neck collar about 1% of the bird’s weight. The device sends location data every 2-3 hours as long as the bird is within cell network coverage. As the birds journey to their Arctic breeding grounds and inevitably leave the network, their location data will be stored on the solar rechargeable devices and uploaded to a server when the birds return to an area with cell coverage.

By the first week of February, some of the project’s cackling geese were on the move, with at least one goose collared in Oklahoma sending location data from as far north as Nebraska. These data will give the researchers and state biologists important information about the preferred habitat of the birds and provide insights into the migration and connectivity among cackling geese that winter in different regions throughout the Southern Great Plains.