LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL 185 



Casual records. — Rare in Atlantic coast States, but records are too 

 numerous to be regarded as casuals. Has been recorded in North 

 and South Carolina, the Bahama Islands, and Cuba. There are 

 two good records for California (Stockton, February 1, 1892, and 

 Gridley, December 15, 1910). 



EXANTHEMOPS ROSSII (Cassin) 



ROSS GOOS^ 



HABITS 



The smallest and the rarest of the geese which regularly visit 

 the United States is this pretty little white goose, hardly larger than 

 our largest ducks, a winter visitor from farthest north, which comes 

 to spend a few winter months in the genial climate of California. 



Spring. — ^Whither it goes when it wings its long flight northeast- 

 ward across the Rocky Mountains in the early spring no one loiows, 

 I^robably to remote and unexplored lands in the Arctic regions. At 

 certain places it is abundant at times, as the following account by 

 Robert S. Williams (1886), of Great Falls, Montana, will illustrate; 

 he writes : 



On the 17th of April, 1885, after several days of stormy weather, with wind 

 from the northwest, accompanied at times by heavy fog and rain, there ap- 

 peared on a bar in the Missouri River at this place a large flock of Ross's 

 snow geese. In the afternoon of the same day, procuring a boat, we rowed 

 toward the flock, which presented a rather remarkable sight, consisting as it 

 did of several thousand individuals squatting closely together along the edge 

 of the bar. Here and there birds were constantly standing up and flapping, 

 their wings, then settling down again, all the while a confused gabble, half 

 gooselike, half ducklike, arising from the whole flock. We approached to 

 within a hundred yards or so, when the geese lightly arose to a considerable 

 height and flew off over the prairie, where they soon alighted and began to 

 feed on the short, green grass. While flying, often two or three birds would 

 dart off from the main flock, and, one behind the other, swing around in 

 great curves, quite after the manner of the little chimney swift in the East. 

 Apparently these same birds remained about till the 2Gth of April, long after 

 the storm was over, but they became broken up into se\;eral smaller flocks 

 some time before leaving. Some five or six specimens were shot during their 

 stay. 



Mr. Roderick MacFarlane (1891) never succeeded in finding its 

 breeding grounds or learning anything definite about where it goes 

 in summer ; he says : 



A male bird of this species was shot at Fort Anderson on 25th May, 1865, 

 where it is by far the least abundant of the genus during the spring migration. 

 The Esquimaux assured us that it did not breed in Liverpool Bay, and it 

 may therefore do so, along with the great bulk of the two larger species, on 

 the extensive islands to the northwest of the American continent. At Fort 

 Chipewyan, Athabasca, however, it is the last of the geese to arrive in spring, 

 but among the first to return in the autumn. 



