LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL 201 



distribution and comparative abundance of the two species. It has 

 even been suggested that they may be only subspecies or varieties, as 

 the characters on which the description of the pink-footed goose was 

 based are not very constant. It seems to be now conceded, however, 

 that they are distinct species and that the latter is now the commonest 

 of the gray geese in Great Britain. 



Nesting. — Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain has kindly sent me the following 

 notes on his experiences with the pink-footed goose in Spitsbergen : 



Although It is probable that this species breeds in Iceland, there is as yet no 

 definite proof, and the only certainly known breeding place is Spitsbergen, so 

 that perhaps the following notes may have some interest. 



The pink-footed goose is still a fairly common bird along the west coast of 

 Spitsbergen. Here it has only two enemies- — man and the Arctic fox. In 

 former years the Arctic fox was the more dangerous foe, and the habits of 

 the goose have been gradually evolved to contend with this wily little enemy, 

 while the only men to be feared were the few trappers and sealers who robbed 

 the nests occasionally in the spring and shot the molting birds in the summer. 

 Now the foxes have been greatly thinned down, but the little sealing sloops, no 

 longer dependent on their sails, but filled with noisy little oil engines, penetrate 

 everywhere, so that the birds are badly harried. Still the eggs of the geese 

 can not be as readily collected as those of the eider and in consequence have 

 less value, and to discover the isolated nests on the tundra and shingle banks 

 in marketable numbers would be a hopeless task. But during the season of 

 molt the goose has only, its speed of foot to trust to, and no doubt large 

 numbers are killed from time to time. 



While the brent have found security from the foxes by breeding on the 

 islets round the coast and the barnacle has attained the same end by nesting 

 on steep cliff's, the pink foot, which is a much larger and stronger bird, has to 

 a certain extent managed to hold its own on the open tundra, though it is 

 much more usual to find the nest in somewhat similar sites to those used by 

 the barnacle. I think it is quite possible for a couple of pink-footed geese to 

 keep a prowling fox at bay, though a single bird might have a very unpleasant 

 time, and probably a fair proportion of nests come to grief in this way every 

 year. Like the other species which breed here, the male pink foot is an excel- 

 lent father and stands by his mate during the incubation period. The first 

 nest we met with was about 10 miles up a wide valley running into Ice Fjord. 

 Here on a slightly raised mossy ridge, which gave a wide view over the snow- 

 sodden flats, we put up a pair of pink-footed geese from the nest, which con- 

 tained 2 eggs, highly incubated on June 26. This was a curiously small 

 clutch, and yet there is no reason to suppose that the birds had been already 

 robbed. Subsequently we found another nest with 2 incubated eggs on a grassy 

 cliff, and this, too, was in a locality which had not been disturbed. Koenig, 

 who examined a very large number of nests of this species, only met with full 

 sets of 2 on two occasions and considers 4 as the normal number, while sets 

 of 3 and 5 occur commonly. He also met with an instance of 7 eggs in one 

 nest and believed them to be the product of one female, but in another case 

 where 9 eggs were found, the stages of incubation proved that two females had 

 laid together. Curiously enough we never met with more than 4 eggs or young, 

 but the number of eggs taken in 1921 was not large. 



Like the brent and barnacle the pink-footed shows a decided tendency to 

 sociability in the breeding season, though many nests are also quite isolated. 



