| Summary: | Five common approaches have been used to determine survival of Canada Goose goslings. Two focus directly on broods without marks (mean brood size and total gosling counts), two focus on counting either marked goslings or the goslings of marked adults, and the last is entirely statistical (recta-analysis). We briefly describe each technique and some inherent problems. We argue that comparisons of gosling survival rates based on average brood size or recta-analysis are likely to result in overestimation, while those based on total gosling counts may result in either under- or overestimation. Survival rates based on marked adults or goslings promise results closer to the true state of nature, although some problems will still persist.
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