Father Goose 

Summary

 Childhood

William Lishman’s fascination with flight began when he was a child watching the gulls swooping behind his father’ plough. His mother, who was expert in the fauna of freshwater streams, held her Master of Arts degree in biology from the University of Toronto. Her love of the natural world was passed on to William and it led to the beginning of his flight with geese. His father taught him a lot about their farm machinery and how a boy could make things that worked as well as machines.

When he was eight years old, he saw a light come swooping in over their fields. After that he wanted to fly. Then, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Cadets 151 Squadron and started learning how to fly a plane. The chance for flying scholarship was wiped out as he was found that he was partially colour-blind. Since then, he worked on his father’s farm. One day, he left home after he had had a quarrel with his mother.

Being a sculptor

His life had little direction when he was twenty-two. He had been procrastinating over the years, figuring he had an eternity to do the things that he had daydreamed. He was lazy, following whims rather than setting goals. His interests had always been diverse. He truly wanted to do everything and had difficulty in maintaining a single direction. Therefore, he decided to learn making sculpture as it was his passion. He was good at sculpture and started earning money from selling some of them.

First flight

He was beginning to get established as a sculptor, but he had not forgotten about flying. After his first real flight with Robertson, a pioneer of hang gliding, once again, he became obsessed by the idea of flying. Ever since then, he has wanted to experience the freedom and nonchalant ease of a bird in flight. Also, due to man’s interference with their natural habitat, many birds who are by nature migratory, no longer depart for southern climes at the onset of winter. Therefore, he had a dream to teach the birds to migrate.

Flying with geese

Almost by chance, he met Bill Carrick, who had trained a flock of geese to fly behind his motor boat, and he help Lishman a lot in the following stages of his attempts of flying with birds. They started to fly with geese who were imprinted on their aircraft. Later, he met Dr Sladen, who had trained for a medical career and pioneered banding and radiotelemetry techniques to track swans and geese’s migrations. They became good friends later and he was an very important person in the project of flying with birds. Dr Sladen, captivated by what they had achieved in persuading young geese to fly with Lishman’s aircraft, invited them to fly a flock of swans form Ontario to Virginia. First, they experimented with geese who began to fly earlier in the season. However, their effort was in vain as Ministry of Natural Resources charged them with illegal migration of geese. Afterwards, he stopped flying with birds and did some projects of sculpture.

However, Dr Sladen’s enthusiasm never waned. He put together the scientific proposal, the key to getting permits in place, although by then they were not evern sure what permits were required. In 1992, Lishman started writing letter to Canadian Wildlife Services for permits. Next year, they finally got the permit required.

Final flight

Since then, they started their experiment of flying with a flock of geese. They had flown south to Airlie twice. They succeeded in the migration as they saw the geese come back after the winter ended. Then, they planned to fly farther to a more southern part of United States. This time, it seemed to be a failure as they hadn’t seen the geese after three months. But one day, they saw twenty-nine out of thirty-one geese come back. It was a great success. After many years of dedication, ingenuity and hard work, Lishman has achieved what many thoughts to be impossible – he has succeeded in teaching birds to migrate.

Comment

Why were they doing this? Why were they dedicating a major chunk of their lives to this wild scheme? It was a desire to experience the world as the bird do – climbing, gliding, and diving through the ocean of surrounding air. It was only in the past few decades that human managed to fly at bird speed, and we still cannot approach to the agility and freedom that birds enjoy in the air. Exploring their ability to re-establish the migration routes of endangered bird species is driven by the desire to get more of that flying elixir. There is something else driving them. It is the guilt many of them feel for what human have done to our planet. One sense of guilt makes us want to change things, to correct the wrongs.

The nature really makes me wonder. How can the geese remember the way? I am surprised by their bird-intelligence. Many people think that human is the smartest in the world but I don’t think so. Other kinds of animals are more intelligent that human, for example, the geese. They fly north in the spring. Taking their time, they move with the weather, optimizing both the spring and the daylight. Having the freedom of air, they find suitable spots on their northward journey when enjoying the wonders of an ever-changing world in the process of its spring awakening. They don’t have all the encumbrances of clothing to take with them or a house to close down. Their comfort is self-contained. They don’t have to deal with automobiles, airports, traffic jams, and on and on. They fly together in great Vs, enjoy its benefits and fly with far greater efficiency than if they travelled alone. The older generations direct the flight to comfort, food and security. They have escaped the harsh wind-driven sleet and those long dark nights. I wonder if they are stupid.

Sometimes, I would like to be a bird. Flying freely in the air while I am enjoying the beauties of planet with its changing seasons and weather patterns. All the problems of social life, pollution and so on cannot make me worry anymore. How happy and free I would be if I was a bird!