Geese, Cooked
Come springtime in the Hamptons, the sight of large flocks of Canada geese, flying in V’s overhead or foraging in fields, brings mixed feelings. On the one hand: summer is around the corner! On the other: droves of (human) jerks will be arriving soon. But, recently, a different seasonal scourge disrupted the status quo. Highly pathogenic avian influenza—or H5N1, a.k.a. bird flu—has plagued the East End’s Canada-goose population, littering some of the most expensive Zip Codes in the country with hundreds of bird carcasses.
The die-off became a talking point after the Instagram account @kookhampton (“kook” is slang for a clueless surfer) posted a photo of a three-foot-deep trench dug on Georgica Beach—a mass grave, packed with geese. Commenters noted that this was “how horror films start,” and that it posed a hazard to excavation-minded dogs and kids with shovels and pails.
For the nitty-gritty of who (Trustees? Mayors? The Department of Environmental Conservation?) is responsible for dealing with scores of deceased birds, there’s one guy to read: Christopher Gangemi, who writes the “On the Wing” column of the East Hampton Star. The other day, he joined Kathleen Mulcahy, the executive director of the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center, to answer a call from the East Hampton homeowners Kyle Glaeser and Andy Yuder, about a sick goose.
Gangemi’s own migration pattern: he left the city and a job in day trading after 9/11; another flock followed him during COVID. “I think, with this war, if there’s the tiniest hint of danger, everybody’s going to come out,” he hypothesized, then spotted the ailing goose, whose neck was coiled, its eyes cloudy.
“I don’t know why I’m gendering him, but we saw him yesterday,” Glaeser explained. “And then we were at dinner last night and a friend told us about all the birds that they found at the beach . . .”
Mulcahy, wearing gloves and a mask, cornered the goose, wrapping it in towels and handily depositing it in a plastic bin. “I chased a turkey for twenty minutes this morning,” she said. The turkey perked up and flew off. This bird, however, was going back to the center to be euthanized.
“Is it peaceful—like we did with our dog?” Yuder asked. “What is it, gas, over the beak?” Mulcahy reassured the callers that the goose would inhale a vapor, and “just go to sleep,” protecting other birds and scavengers from the virus.
Gangemi’s articles chart the progression of the disaster, from “Geese Rule State Bird Count Here” (February 19th, when 10,806 geese were spotted on the East End; business as usual) up to March 26th’s “Goose Die-Off Slowing.” The D.E.C. is hopeful that the flu will peter out, as warmer weather leads geese to break off into breeding pairs.
But one goose still had to make its final journey to the rescue center, in Hampton Bays, which, last year, had 2,666 “patient admissions,” spanning nearly two hundred species, and released more than eight hundred and fifty animals back into the wild. That bird was met by a staffer named Grace DeNatale, outside an isolation tent. Geese had suffered this year, she noted, because the winter was so brutal. “This was supposed to be their oasis, and everything was frozen for weeks,” she said. “They were all probably smooshed together in whatever thawed areas they could find, with barely any resources. People would also be getting sick in that situation.” (2025 was the year of raccoon distemper—it’s always something.)
Gangemi had spoken to an ornithologist at Cornell who said that the goose population would likely bounce back. But they face other threats.
“Cars, pesticides, lead,” Mulcahy said. “Have we ever gotten a swan that didn’t have lead poisoning?”
She introduced the center’s education animals, which, for various reasons, can’t be released. There was Henry Hunter, “a very angry screech owl,” and America, a red-tailed hawk, who, as a baby, had fallen out of his nest. After being reared by rehabilitators, he was sent to a flight-training program in New Jersey, but failed (bad vision).
DNA testing some years ago revealed that the center had been wrong about the sexes of many of its residents. Vlad, a turkey vulture who’d been hit by a train, was, in fact, female. The center had tried to release Vlad but kept getting calls from restaurants complaining that she was eating people’s French fries.
“You know where turkey vultures really like to hang out?” Gangemi said. “The Roanoke Avenue Elementary School—there’s this chimney and they just all sit around it. Whatever is coming out of that chimney, they like the smell.”
The goose was dead. Everyone headed back outside, where a steady chirping could be heard. “How’s that for the best sound in the world?” Mulcahy asked.
“Peepers!” Gangemi said. The spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) is a small, loud frog; male peepers have a bell-like mating call that heralds the arrival of spring. ♦