228 BULLETIN 130, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



as northern California, but these records have been shown to refer 

 to the eastern Canada goose. The breeding range of the white- 

 cheeked goose is now laiown to he wholly north of the United States 

 boundary. 



Nesting. — Although the white-cheeked goose is quite common 

 throughout its restricted range, and eA^en numerous in certain parts 

 of it, its nest has not often been found and very little has been pub- 

 lished about its habits. The published reports of the Alexander 

 expeditions to southern Alaska contain the most important contri- 

 butions to its life history, and even these are meager enough. 



Joseph Dixon (1908), a member of this expedition, writes: 



The country about Canoe Passage on Hawkins Island was low and rolling, 

 with large open parks bordered by wooded creeks. There were a number of 

 lagoons almost shut off from the bay by long grassy gravel bars. One moun- 

 tain in the interior of the island was 1,900 feet above the sea, according to the 

 aneroid. Hutchins geese were nesting about these lagoons, and about the 

 20th of June goslings were everywhere. It was strange how they all hatched 

 out so near the same time. I was wandering home one evening about 10 

 o'clock. It was just after sundown, but the deeper woods were beginning to 

 darken slowly. It was high tide, so that I had to make a cut clear around 

 the head of a slough. .Just as I came out of the thick huckleberry underbrush 

 in the strip of timber I stumbled over a log and almost fell on top of an old 

 goose that was sitting on a nestful of eggs. She made a terrible racket as she 

 went flopping and squawking off the nest, and I do not know which of us was 

 the worst scared for a minute. The nest was placed in the open close to the 

 trunk of a large tree just at the edge of the wood. It was lined with moss and 

 down and held 6 eggs, which I afterwards regretted were almost ready to 

 hatch. 



Although he called them Hutchins geese at that time, the geese of 

 that region all proved to be of the present form. 



Eggs. — ^A set of five eggs of this subspecies in the United States 

 National Museum was collected by Dr. Wilfred H. Osgood on Prince 

 of Wales Island, Alaska, on May 22, 1903. These eggs are practically 

 indistinguishable from average eggs of the eastern Canada goose. 

 They measure 86 by 59, 87.4 by 59.4, 86 by 55.8, 87.2 by 57.8, and 87 

 by 58.2 millimeters. 



Young. — Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1910) refers to two broods of young 

 as follows : 



On June 21, also on Hawkins Island, Miss Kellogg flushed an old goose from 

 a nest in the tall grass near the beach. There were five newly hatched young. 

 One of these, taken as a specimen (No. 1131), is identical in coloration with a 

 downy young one from the Sitkan district. On June 22, Dixon records as fol- 

 lows : " In crossing some marshy flats we came upon six geese, five of which 

 flew noisily away ; but the sixth came gabbling toward us. We soon saw that 

 her unusual tameness was due to her anxiety in regard to six or eight newly 

 hatched goslings that scrambled from under our feet and disappeared with a 

 splash into a near-by pond. I walked up to within 25 feet of the mother as she 



