Hundreds of Canada Geese in Southport Car Park creating health hazard

The Southport Theatre car park has become home to scores of Canada Geese . The large birds have turned some parts of the car park into a slippery mess with their excrement creating a health hazard.

The Canada goose (Branta canadensis), sometimes called Canadian goose is a large wild goose with a black head and neck, white cheeks, white under its chin, and a brown body. It is native to the arctic and temperate regions of North America, and it is occasionally found during migration across the Atlantic in northern Europe.

 It has been introduced to the United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Japan, Chile, Argentina, and the Falkland Islands.Like most geese, the Canada goose is primarily herbivorous and normally migratory; often found on or close to fresh water, the Canada goose is also common in brackish marshes, estuaries, and lagoons.

Extremely adept at living in human-altered areas, Canada geese have established breeding colonies in urban and cultivated habitats, which provide food and few natural predators. The success of this common park species has led to its often being considered a pest species because of its excrement, its depredation of crops, its noise, its aggressive territorial behavior toward both humans and other animals, and its habit of stalking and begging for food, the latter a result of humans disobeying artificial feeding policies toward wild animals.