Ultralight Pilot Takes Wing To Teach Geese How To Migrate
When he first came up with the idea, a lot of people thought Bill Lishman was nuts.
Who could blame them?
A wild-haired eccentric sculptor who lives in an underground house and is married to a woman who knits with fur and leather, Lishman was planning to hatch a bunch of goose eggs, raise the birds, then teach them to migrate by leading them in an ultralight airplane from Ontario to Virginia.
If that ain’t nutty, neither is pecan pie.
But three years ago, using the process called “imprinting,” by which the hatchlings believe the first living, moving thing they see - that is, Lishman - is their parent, he did just that.
On Oct. 19, 1993, at 6 a.m., as the sun rose on a chilly fall morning and a light wind blew from the northeast, Lishman slid behind the controls of his flimsy ultralight, dubbed Goose Leader, lifted off and, trailed by a gaggle of 18 Canada geese, pointed the nose south.
Up and up they rose, the flat expanse of Canadian farmland fanning out beneath them, almost 40 miles of Lake Ontario before them.
It was breathtaking.
“The birds,” Lishman marvels, recounting the adventure in his new book, “Father Goose” (Crown Publishers, $25), “are like a string of beads off my right wing tip.”
For three days, they flew, three and four hours at a time, over streams and rivers, over Pennsylvania farmland, until they finally reached the wildlife preserve, Airlie, 420 miles away in northern Virginia.
Safe and sound, there the birds wintered - and there, thanks in no small measure to a “20/20” segment on Lishman and the migration - was born the idea for a major motion picture, “Fly Away Home,” starring Jeff Daniels, coming to a theater near you in September.
The following spring, 13 of the geese made the return migration to Ontario, having memorized the route in one of the great mysteries of nature.
Since that initial and remarkable success, Lishman has led two more migrations. In 1994, 39 geese followed Lishman to Virginia; 34 returned in the spring.
And last fall, he led 29 geese to Airlie, where he and another pilot, Joe Duff, met up with a second flock of 31 geese raised there from eggs. The two flocks became one and followed Lishman and Duff to a protected wildlife area near the coast of South Carolina.
So, who is Bill Lishman? What could bring him to undertake such an adventure? And how does he do it?
He is, quite simply, a self-acknowledged lifelong oddball. Soft-spoken and gentle, he is, at 57, a man who grew up on a remote farm in Ontario, dropped out of art school to become a metal sculptor, grew his hair and beard, and commenced to living a hippie lifestyle long before anybody thought to call such people hippies.
“I remember the first time somebody called me that,” says Lishman, who stopped in Philadelphia recently to sign books. “I was down in Mexico and this guy said, ‘Hey, hippie.’ I said, ‘What’s that?”’ None of which is particularly relevant, except to raise the question: If not a nature-loving hippie, then who would concoct such a scheme? For Lishman, the quest for a migration actually began a decade before, in the early ‘80s, when he turned his fascination with flying into building an ultralight. After several failed efforts, he built an ultralight and was going for a fly each morning before breakfast.
“I would see these blue herons and I would try to fly close to them,” says Lishman. “Of course, wild birds will turn away because they’re afraid of the aircraft.”
Then, as he writes in “Father Goose,” he was flying over his farm one morning in the late 1980s when he spotted a field blanketed with ducks. He dropped down for a closer look when, suddenly, they took off en masse:
“In a moment I was in their midst. I powered up to climb out of the flock, but they were climbing, too. They made no attempt to dive away from me; by default they had accepted me into their number. …
“The thrill was indescribable. Caught in their mass spirit I winged along, just another bird in this autumnal squadron headed for the marshes to the northwest, my attention focused on a duck off my left holding perfect formation about 4 feet off my wingtip, just as if I had always been his wing-mate - and for a moment I felt I had.”
That indescribable thrill, coupled with his passion for birds and wildlife in general, led Lishman to wonder about the possibility of actually training birds to fly alongside him regularly.
That was when Lishman began raising his own geese from eggs, hoping they would “imprint” on him as a parent. It worked and, after first teaching the young goslings to chase him on foot, he was eventually able to lure them into flight.
When word got out, local newspaper and TV reporters began finding their way to Lishman’s farm. That’s when a number of ornithologists sat up and took notice.
Among migratory birds, the actual flight routes are passed along from one generation to the next. If a generation of birds fails to migrate, as was the case among some flocks, the whole process breaks down.
“The ornithologist who had seen or heard about this suggested it may be a solution to establishing migratory routes for endangered species,” says Lishman.
They were right.
After proving the theory with the plentiful Canada geese, Lishman has now turned his attention to the much more endangered whooping crane. In all the world, says Lishman, there are about 150 cranes in captivity and another 150 wild cranes.
“They migrate from Northern Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas,” says Lishman. “Disease, or one good storm or an oil spill could wipe them out. So we want to start a secondary flock.”
Because of their rarity, learning more about the cranes, carefully cultivating the eggs, rearing them and leading the migration is going to be an expensive, 6- or 7-year process. For now, Lishman is working with the slightly less rare sandhill crane.
By the time that expedition is ready, Lishman figures he’ll be the “old man” of the process, with a sort of “emeritus” role.
For now, he’s promoting his book and raising funds for the project. He’s also trying to make peace with his “oddball” image.
“I guess I’ve got it,” he says, “so I might as well enjoy it.”