{Authors are responsible for nomenclature used!) 





The Scottish Naturalist 



No. 64.] 1917 [April. 



BRENT GEESE. 



By Abel Chapman, M.B.O.U. 



I OBSERVE an inquiry by Mesdames Rintoul and Baxter as 

 to the relative abundance in Scotland of the two forms of 

 Brent Geese which have been differentiated as of European 

 and American origin respectively. I feel assured that these 

 accomplished lady ornithologists will forgive my suggesting 

 that no two such forms as are presupposed exist in Wild 

 Nature. The sole basis upon which a pseudo-differentiation 

 has been erected is merely a varying colour-intensity 

 darker or paler on the undersides of these Geese. But 

 every wildfowler who has enjoyed personal acquaintance 

 with Brent Geese in Great Britain (as I have done for forty 

 odd years) speedily learns the elementary fact that in every 

 big pack of these Geese, whether on British or Irish Coasts, 

 there are found associated together individuals that display 

 every grade of colour. There are many whose breast- 

 plumage is as dark as their backs ; others are almost white 

 beneath; while every intermediate gradation of tone is in 

 evidence. At a single shot one may kill Geese of each and 

 every variety of colour. There are even though rare 

 eccentrics who "sport" waistcoats of a rich, warm brown, 

 instead of the customary cold slate-grey. All these are 

 merely individual variations such as, analogously, one sees 

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