The warning comes in the wake of the life-saving ditching of a U.S. Airways jet in New York’s Hudson River after the plane struck a flock of the birds.

John Allan, head of bird management at the British government’s Central Science Laboratory, says smaller birds are not that great of a threat to aviation.

“This particular species can cause a problem because of their size. If they are sucked into an engine, they can bring a plane down,” he told the Guardian.

Allan points out that Canada geese numbers have greatly increased in Britain, and that collisions between planes and birds have caused the loss of 88 aircraft and resulted in the death of 243 people.

The birds spend the summer in Canada's Arctic tundra, and have historically wintered in the southern wetlands of the United States. Some scientists say that flocks of them have recently begun to winter in Europe because of the continent’s warming climate.

The birds are also found in Far East Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, eastern China, and throughout Japan.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons