LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL 203 



is quiet and retired, tliey come inland just as readily in the daytime as at 

 night 



Geese feed very greedily anywhere at the break up of a snowstorm, and 

 they are then least difficult to approach, being too much engrossed in eating 

 to heed slight indications of disturbance or interruption. The pink-footed 

 geese, when associated with other species on a feeding ground, keep apart 

 and are not inclined to be sociable. In the day they are vi.sible on a hillside 

 at a very considerable distance and, if a yellow stubble, look like a blue cloud 

 on the land. They are also very conspicuous objects on the sands of the 

 coast, lining the tide edge in long extended line, like a regiment on parade. 



In the dusk of evening or at night geese are not so wide-awake as in the 

 day, or they do not see so well, and I have sometimes walked into a flock to 

 our mutual astonishment. 



Behavior. — The same writer says of the habits of this species : 



The habits of the pink-footed goose so closely resemble those of the bean 

 goose that much which has been written of the one will hold good of the other. 

 They arrive in the Humber district the last week in September and early in 

 October ; the earliest dates in my notebook are September 26, October 3, 

 October 5 (twice), October 10. Mr. Haigh has known them appear as early 

 as August 26, in 1893, in excessively hot weather. During the day they 

 haunt the stubbles and clover fields on the wolds and open districts, rising 

 about the same hour in the evening and wend their way, in the long extended 

 order, to the islands and sand banks in the Humber, to return as punctually 

 to their feeding grounds at the break of day. They are the wildest and most 

 unapproachable of all the geese. 



Within the recollection of certainly three generations and probably since 

 the inclosure of the wolds, if not before, flocks of wild geese, coming up from 

 the coast, have been in the habit of passing over the town of Louth in the early 

 morning on their way to their feeding grounds on the high wolds. The large 

 barley walks are the places which are most frequented, not so much, as I 

 have found by an examination of the stomach, for scattered grain as young 

 white clover and trefoil plants, of which they are immoderately fond. Con- 

 sidering the persistency with which geese day by day resort to the same 

 locality it is surprising so few are shot. The fields on the wolds are very 

 extensive, and geese keep near the center ; on coming in from the coast they 

 fly high, and it is only in stormy weather that their flight is low enough for 

 a shot from a heavy gun to do execution, fired from the vantage ground of 

 a solitary barn, shed, or stack on a hilltop, where at the same time the shooter 

 remains concealed till the skein of geese are well above him. 



Mr. Howard Saunders says : " The voice of the pink-footed goose differs 

 from that of the bean goose in being sharper in tone, and the note is also re- 

 peated more rapidly." It is extremely difficult to express the note or the 

 difference between the calls of birds on paper. I can, however, testify from 

 experience that there is a very distinct difference between the call note of these 

 two species. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Breeding range. — Breeds in Spitsbergen, probably in Franz-Josef 

 Land and possibly in Iceland. 



^Y^nter range. — Northern Europe, Scandinavia, Holland, Bel- 

 gium, Great Britain, Iceland, France, Germany, and northern 

 JRussia. 



