Returning Geese’s Flight Plan Makes Their Mother Proud

WARRENTON, Va. —  Getting to Virginia was easy for the 18 geese that Canadian artist and pilot William Lishman raised from birth. All they had to do was follow their mother, the airplane.

Whether any of the geese would make it back to their Canadian summer home was what had Lishman fretting for days, until 10 of them suddenly appeared outside his door Friday.

“They look in great shape,” Lishman said by phone from his Toronto-area home. “I took them all kinds of goodies to eat, but they’d rather root in the pond.”

Lishman hoped to “imprint” the birds at birth to believe that an ultra-light aircraft was their parent, so they would follow the plane south for their winter migration. Geese, cranes and swans learn their migration routes from their parents.

If the experiment worked with geese, Lishman and scientist William Sladen of the Airlie Conference Center reasoned, the same technique could be used to restore such rare species as whooping cranes and trumpeter swans to territories they once occupied.

Two of the birds died in accidents over the winter. When the remaining 16 left the Airlie Conference Center near Warrenton on April 2 and weren’t seen for nearly two weeks, Lishman worried.

It now appears the birds were just taking their time, and Lishman said the remaining six should show up eventually.

“Even getting 10 back is fine. It’s better odds than happens in normal nature,” he said.

In the meantime, Lishman is incubating another batch of goose eggs. He hopes to introduce the hatchlings to their mother, the plane, in the fall. The first group’s next challenge also will come in the fall, when Lishman and Sladen hope they will return to Virginia, this time without their mother’s help.