Taking a gander at geese in Windsor-Essex

The Canada goose is a staple of life in Windsor — and people have strong opinions about the birds.

"Anywhere you go and you want to walk somewhere, there's poop everywhere," said Stephanie Bayliss. "You can sit on the road and you have to wait. Sometimes, [there's] 20 babies you have to wait for them all to cross the street before you can actually get going."

Others, like Wayne Tennant, don't mind them.

"They add aesthetics to the environment, and [if] there's some poop on the ground, you go around it," he said.

Tom Coke, executive director of the Jack Miner Migration Bird Sanctuary, says geese are misunderstood creatures.

He invites people to come to the sanctuary to gain an appreciation for them. The sanctuary takes in geese as part of a re-location initiative mostly with municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area.

Right now, it's nesting season for the geese, so Windsor-Essex residents can expect geese and their young to be in unexpected places, he said.

Two car crashes in Windsor-Essex last week happened while geese were on the roadway and drivers stopped to let them cross the road. One driver faced a careless driving charge after a crash on the E.C. Row Expressway on Friday morning.

Coke is pleading with drivers to drive more carefully when geese are crossing the road.

The City of Windsor says it deals with geese by cleaning geese feces in highly populated areas at least three times a week. James Chacko, the city's executive director of parks and facilities, says they can do more on a case-by-case basis.

In a statement to CBC News, the Ministry of Transportation says it is reviewing Friday's crash and say they are "consistently working to ensure Ontario roads remain some of the safest in North America."