What they like

Open water with grass around it. Park ponds, puddles, river floodplains, wet meadows. Short grass is its buffet. Don’t turn your garden into a golf course: leave a rough corner with tall herbs and a messy edge. In parks and yards: keep banks natural. No neat edge-cutting, do leave reed and bulrush. On farmland: keep shallow wet patches and wide, wet ditch edges. That’s where it likes to sit and breed.

Ecological importance

It’s a heavy grazer: keeps grass short and moves nutrients from land to water. Eats mainly grasses, shoots and water plants, sometimes grain. Eggs and chicks are preyed on by foxes and the white-tailed eagle. Too many geese in one spot? Variety helps: more rough vegetation, flower-rich margins and less “perfect” mowing spread the pressure.

When in the Netherlands

All year round. Many breed here. There’s also migration, especially in autumn and winter.

Status

Common. Non-native from North America.