LIFE HISTORIES OP NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL 199 



"We learn from Arthur Young's Agricultural Survey (1798) that the small 

 country towns and villages in the middle-marsh and sea-marsh districts of 

 Lincolnshire were surrounded by vast open fields, arable lands, cow and horso 

 pastures, and furze ; on strong land the i.-otation was fallows, wheat, beans, and 

 again fallows. The area under beans in the low country was enormous, the 

 wheat stubbles being plowed once, and the beans sown broadcast in the spring 

 and never cleaned. These were harvested late in the autumn, usually got 

 with much loss from the jaws of winter. These were the days of the gray 

 goose, which our observant forefathers called the bean goose {Anser segetuni), 

 coming in great flocks in the later autumn to feast on the shelled beans in the 

 open fields ; and this continued till the change in cultivation and general in- 

 closure banished them from their ancient haunts. 



Most of the old wild-fowl shooters, who have long since gone over to the 

 majority, used to assert that these autumn fiights fed regularly in the bean 

 fields as long as the old system of agriculture continued — a system in which 

 quite one-third of the cultivated land was under that crop. 



Nesting. — Kev. F. C. R. Jourdain writes to me that in Nova 

 Zembla the nests of the bean goose are found on grassy tussocks on 

 low ground, and that in Lapland it breeds in the partly wooded 

 marshes where a few birch trees grow, nesting generally on the top 

 of a grassy hummock. 



Witherby's Handbook (1920) says that its main breeding haunts 

 are in more wooded districts than those of most geese; that it nests 

 "on islets in rivers or swamps, sheltered by rank vegetation and 

 sometimes by willows or other bushes," and that the nest is "com- 

 posed of down mixed with grass, moss, etc." 



Eggs. — Mr. Jourdain says of the eggs : 



They are large as compared with other geese, bulky in appearance, creamy 

 white when first laid, but rapidly becoming nest stained with yellowish, which 

 becomes more pronounced as incubation advances. 



The set usually consists of 4 or 5 eggs, occasionally 6. The 

 measurements of 51 eggs, as given in Witherby's Handbook (1920), 

 average 84.2 by 55.6 millimeters; the eggs showing the four ex- 

 tremes measure 91 by 57.2, 84 by 59, and 74.5 by 53.3 millimeters. 



Food. — Mr. Cordeaux (1898) says: 



The bean goose is very partial to all sorts of grain, and, in this respect, 

 differs from the gray lag, whose chief food is grass. A local name is " corn- 

 goose," in France " harvest-goose," and in Transylvania it is known as the 

 " growing-grain goose " ; it will, however, eat grass and clover as readily as its 

 congeners when the stubbles are exhausted. 



Behavior. — Seebohm (1901) describes the flocking habits of old 

 and young birds in Siberia, as follows: 



I then skirted the margin of a long, narrow inlet, exactly like the dried-up 

 bed of a river, running some miles into the tundra, bending round almost 

 behind the inland sea. I had not gone more than a mile when I heard the 

 cackle of geese; a bend of the river bed gave me an opportunity of stalking 



