Workers cry fowl after goose eggs sprayed

Some employees in a west-end industrial park are outraged after theywitnessed a building manager spray goose eggs to rid the area of the wild birds.

Workers such as Shalissa Hannaberry, who says she saw the manager spraying a special agent on a nest to terminate the eggs, were disturbed and reported the incident.

"They shooed the mother and father away from the nest with claw poker sticks," Hannaberry said of her workplace 'pets,' a pair of Canada geese living temporarily in the parking lot on Solandt Road.

"I named him Frederick," she said, "but I haven't picked one for her yet."

Company had proper permits

The Canada geese were nesting on a traffic island, but on Friday morning, the building's management company, KRP Development Group, arrived with the spraying equipment.

Although several employees were outraged by the company's actions, KRP was within its rights. Management had been granted a special permit from Canadian Wildlife Services to destroy the eggs.

Under the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act, it is illegal to tamper with wild birds' active nests on private property, unless an applicant can prove the animals are causing damage or danger. In this case, the geese were said to be a danger to drivers who use the parking lot.

The act is meant to protect many species of geese, ducks, cranes and shorebirds.

'Just a timing problem'

Bird advocates argued there were other options that building management could have taken other than destroying the eggs.

Debra Haas, the executive director of the Wild Bird Care Centre in Ottawa, said the company could have simply waited 25 to 30 days for the eggs to incubate, at which point the birds would have left within a few hours of hatching.

"I'm somewhat astounded because it's all so unncessary," she said of the spraying. "It's really just a time problem."

Mae Goguen, the centre's avian care supersivor, said it was in the birds' migratory instincts to return to make a nest in an area they were familiar with.

Early prevention best solution

"There's a lot of geese in that area. They've been living in that area for years, so when you start building houses and parking lots, these geese return, and they end up laying eggs in parking lots that weren't there last year," she said.

The best thing to do is to allow nature to takes its course,Goguen said, and either wait out the incubation period or shoo the birds away so they settle in another area before they begin nesting.

"When you start hearing the honking in the sky, you see geese hanging in the same spot, you can put up fencing, flowers, just something to prevent them from having a nest."