As Kristen Mobilia walked beside the Muddy River in the Fenway one afternoon, she spotted three park rangers searching for Canada goose nests. In a city filled with the peevish waterfowl, it didn’t take them long, and they quickly pounced.

As two of the rangers used umbrellas to keep the flock at bay, the third grabbed the geese’s eggs from their nests, dunked them in buckets of water, then dried and saturated them in oil.

“The geese were squawking a little bit as they were backed off their nest,’’ said Mobilia, a board member of the Fenway Garden Society. “But then they were in the water, floating around, and it was not a huge issue.’’

Park rangers aren’t typically known as nest raiders. But every spring, they converge on the Esplanade and other Boston parks to carry out a process called egg addling, a type of population control for the hordes of Canada geese who, to general chagrin, make Boston their home.

“We recognize how frustrating wildlife may be, but also amazing and we want to coexist peacefully,’’ said Amanda Kennedy, Boston’s director of animal care and control. “We want to enjoy our public spaces goose-poop free.’’

With addling, eggs are removed early in their development during nesting season, coated with corn oil, and placed back into the nest, specialists say. Once the eggs are coated, air cannot pass through the shell, halting the development.

This spring, Boston has invited volunteers to join the addling campaign by flagging nests in parks, helping rangers with their search. At a training session in March, parks department staff said they are eager to see whether volunteers can help curb the goose population.

“Geese have really affected our residents’ and visitors’ ability to enjoy our parks,’’ said Annissa Essaibi-George, a Boston city councilor who sponsored the session. “In Boston, we have a huge financial investment in all of our parks, and geese and their waste have really done a number on one of our greatest natural resources.’’

Ryan Woods, a spokesman for the Boston Parks and Recreation Department, said it’s the first time residents have been invited to take part in the program. If residents see a nest on public property, they can flag it and contact the department.

“This is the first step to see how resident involvement works,’’ said Woods. “At this point we’re only allowing rangers to do it on city property.’’

Park rangers have addled eggs for more than a decade, he said. On average, geese have between six and eight offspring, and sometimes as many as 12. Without addling, the population would be substantially higher, he said.

“Every year you see results,’’ Woods said. “We would have more serious concerns, and the geese population would be higher,’’ he said.

H.W. Huesmann, a waterfowl biologist at MassWildlife, said that the geese who live in Boston have no migration instincts or natural predators, which has led to overpopulation. Geese in urban areas also live about twice as long as those in rural areas, he said.

Inside of Route 128, there are as many geese as in the rest of the state combined.

“The last time we did a survey in 2008 we had over 8,000 resident geese [inside Route 128],’’ Huesmann said.

Facing such numbers, addling must be comprehensive to make a difference, specialists say. About 95 percent of eggs must be destroyed over a decade to reduce a flock by 25 percent, according to MassWildlife.

Huesmann said 400 goose nests — containing about 2,000 eggs — were addled last year in Massachusetts. While most of the nests were in parks, some geese-weary residents took matters into their own hands and addled eggs on their property.

Residents must receive a permit to addle. On average, Huesmann receives 45 requests annually, but has already gotten 54 this year.

“The most successful programs have both city and volunteer involvement,’’ said Lynsey White Dasher, director of humane wildlife conflict resolution at the Humane Society of the United States.

At the training session, Dasher demonstrated how to use an umbrella to frighten away the geese, clearing a path to their eggs.

How the eggs respond in water determines whether they should be addled, Dasher said. Eggs that float are older than 14 days, meaning they should be left alone.

“At less than 14 days old, geese embryos don’t feel pain,’’ Dasher said. “The research was very instrumental in forming our opinion that it’s a humane method of geese population control.’’

Eggs should then be dried off and covered in food-grade corn oil. After the geese leave the nest, predators — from foxes and raccoons to magpies and crows — typically eat the eggs.

The growing goose population requires aggressive action, Dasher and others said. Dasher said geese gravitate to open, green spaces just like people, making their expanded presence hard to avoid.

“There’s droppings where kids are playing, near shopping malls and office buildings,’’ Dasher said. “And they will aggressively protect their nests.’’

For residents like Mobilia, the growing geese population has become a nuisance.

“I’ve lived in Fenway for 20 years and geese have become more prevalent. On our front lawn, there’s tons of goose droppings and very loud geese at four in the morning,’’ she said. “We don’t hate the geese. It’s just the population has grown so much in a nonnatural way.’’

But some residents said the idea of destroying goose eggs strikes them as wrong.

“We’re choosing this for them. In abortion, it’s a woman’s right,’’ said Andres Daza of Boston. “We can’t decide for the geese.’’

Ines Boussebaa can be reached at inesb@bu.edu.