192 BULLETIN 130, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



breast to "citron yellow" on the belly. The colors become duller 

 and browner with increasing age; large downy young are "olive 

 brown " above and grayish or " deep olive buff " below. 



I have seen no specimens showing the development of the juvenal 

 plumage. This is much like the adult plumage, except that the " white 

 front " is lacking and there are no black spots on the under parts, 

 which are mottled with whitish and gray; the upper parts are 

 duller colored with lighter edgings; the tail feathers are more 

 pointed and narrower and the wing coverts are narrower than in 

 adults. This plumage is worn without much change during the 

 first winter and spring ; but more or less white appears in the " white 

 front," and sometimes a few black spots appear in the breast. The 

 tail is molted in the spring, and during the next summer a complete 

 postnuptial molt produces a plumage which is practically adult. 



Food.—LncA^n M. Turner (1886) says, of the food of this 

 species : " It inhabits the fresh-water lagoons, and is essentially a 

 vegetarian. The only animal food found in their crops was aquatic 

 larvae and insects. I am not aware that it eats shellfish at any 

 season of the year. The young grass shoots found in the margins 

 of the ponds form its principq,l food." Doctor Nelson (1887) says: 

 " During August and September the geese and many other wild 

 fowl in the north feed upon the abundant berries of that region 

 and become very fat and tender." In the interior valleys of Cali- 

 fornia, where it spends the winter, and on its migrations through 

 agricultural districts, it feeds in the grain fields on fallen grain in 

 the fall and on the tender shoots of growing grain in the spring. 

 In some places where these geese were formerly abundant they did 

 so much damage to the young crops that the farmers hired men 

 to drive them away. 



Audubon (1840) says: 



In feeding they immerse their necks, like other species ; but during con- 

 tinued rains tliey visit the cornfields and large savannahs. While in Ken- 

 tucky they feed on tlie beech nuts and acorns that drop along the margins 

 of tlieir favorite ponds. In the fields they pick up the grains of maize left 

 by the squirrels and racoons, and nibble the young blades of grass. In their 

 gizzards I have never found fishes nor water lizards, but often broken shells 

 of different kinds of snails. 



Behavior. — The flight of the white-fronted goose is similar to 

 that of the Canada goose, for which it might easily be mistaken at 

 a distance. It flies in V-shaped flocks, led by an old gander, and 

 often very high in the air. Its flight has been well described by 

 Neltje Blanchan (1898) as follows: 



A long clanging cackle, wah, loah, wah, wah, rapidly repeated, rings out of 

 the late autumn sky, and looking up, we see a long, orderly line of laughing 

 geese that have been feeding since daybreak in the stubble of harvested grain 



