What does Be Bird Wise mean in practice among the various human observers of the wild birds populating our Skagit Valley landscape every fall and winter? Who are the observers of the birds and what are the different ways these observers comport themselves in the landscape in that avian observation?

We’re talking to various user groups to share their distinct experience and best practices. Dairy Farmer Alan Mesman is next up in our series. The Mesman family has farmed in Skagit since 1942 on 300 acres just outside the town of La Conner.

The presence of snow geese and swans in Skagit is a phenomenon of the last 40 years which has altered the crops farmers grow and introduced some unexpected and costly inconveniences to dairy production, as Mesman shares.

Riding across Fir Island as a kid with my mom, she’d say, “Look, Alan, the swans are here,” and there’d be seven swans in a field, that’s it! Growing up in La Conner in the 70s we never saw anything like the numbers you see now. I was born in ‘63. All the swans and geese weren't a thing then.

The snow geese are increasing in number. I used to duck hunt in the 1970s and there were much fewer geese then. Now it’s swung around and it’s all snow geese. Not something I’d seen as a kid. Swans have also really increased. In the last 15 years, I don’t know why the geese have increased so much but they have.

The wild birds have a different impact every year.

We let the geese land in the fields in October and November, and let people hunt them from our fields. If the geese land in our fields in the fall there’s enough time for the grass underneath to grow back. But February through April it’s a disaster if they’re in our fields. The snow geese will eat off whole fields, and if you plant a new crop in the fall they come and pull everything up. That’s what ended wheat in Skagit. The geese took out acres and acres of wheat.

A flock of geese can take out a quarter of a crop of feed grass yield while they’re here. They’ll eat an entire cutting (there are four cuttings per field of feed grass) and I have to make up the loss somewhere, where does that feed come from instead? I’ve had to buy hay and alfalfa from Eastern Washington, which is expensive. I had to buy four loads one year for a total of $60K, which I normally grow myself. There was a three year period 2014 to 2016 where I had to make up the difference. Recoup the loss? Not really, it was money gone, what I lost on geese.

Twenty years ago people were growing a lot of wheat in Skagit. But because of the snow geese, most have switched to barley, because the geese won’t eat it. Wheat is certainly worth more if you can grow it. But wheat has just about gone away. The geese grind the wheat down to the mud.

Hunting doesn’t even put a dent in their numbers. A lot of bird watchers are against hunting but money from hunting licenses has gone into wildlife programs that benefit the birds. There are just so many snow geese now. It makes you wonder if one day there’ll be some disease that goes through them.

As soon as hunting season is over I put up these flags, plastic fence posts with garbage bags on them, 40 to 50 of these in a field. Wheat is a lost cause unless you put up the plywood coyotes and garbage bags on plastic posts. Those mitigations don’t deter the swans and ducks, but they keep the snow geese out.

Swans impact us, too, though there aren’t nearly as many of them as there are geese. A swan is like a little flying cow. They’ll land and eat down to about 2 inches and then move on. They’re more of a grazing animal. The swans are pretty tame. They’ve not been hunted so they’re not afraid of humans. The ducks will hang out with the swans. The smart ducks know if you stand next to a big bird you won’t get shot (during hunting season).

But swans are clumsy. One year we were out of power two to three times a week because a swan would hit the power line after eating potatoes (the potatoes are rotten, so that isn't a problem to me that the swans are eating them). They tank up on all that sugar in the potatoes and are heavier going out than when they come in and they hit the wires. It’s hard for them to get off the ground and take off.

A swan hits the power lines and then you’re out of power. You see a flash, they get one shot of juice through them and they’re dead almost immediately. Geese can hit the wires too but swans do it best.

You need electricity to milk the cows and cool the milk and everything else, I have to run everything off a generator until the power is back. Puget Sound energy repairs the power lines but the cost of generating power in the meantime falls on (the farmer).

One year we were out of power every two to three days for a couple of months. Swans hit the wires a lot along Dodge Valley and Chilberg road. In fact, right now we got some un-dug potatoes on Chilberg and Alverson. It will be interesting to see what happens this year with the swans. At least this year the power line is just on one side of the road where the rotten potatoes are still in the field.

The swan bodies are occasionally picked up by fish and wildlife but mostly the coyotes have them for supper.

Birdwatchers? I have no problem with birdwatchers. Sometimes I’ve had to chase birds out of a field with a shotgun and some people (actually) like that because it makes the birds fly up and the person can then get that photo where the birds are so thick you can’t see through them.

In La Conner birdwatching has never been a problem from parking or crowds; it isn't an issue where I am; the material loss from the birds is what impacts me. People pull off the road to take pictures of the birds. I’m not that bothered by that. It’s the birds themselves that bother me.

None of these problems with swans and geese was something we thought of when I was a kid. Since that time entire crop choices have changed in Skagit.

By: Bryony Angell

Bird Wise Observations: A Dairy Farmer

Bird Wise Observations: A Tribal Elder

Bird Wise Observations: A Birder