LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL 237 



BRANTA BERNICLA BERNICLA (Linnaeus) 



BRANT 



HABITS 



For the past 25 years the American brant has been called Branta 

 'bernicla glaiicogastra (Brehm), white-bellied brant, ever since Dr. 

 Elliott Cones (1897) called our attention to the supposed subspecific 

 distinction between the common European brant and the ISTorth 

 American bird of the Atlantic coast and proposed the adoption of 

 Brehm's name for our bird. The European bird was supposed to breed 

 in Spitsbergen, Franz-Josef Land, Nova Zembla, and the Taimyr 

 Peninsula, and the American bird, glaucogastra^ was supposed to 

 breed in western Greenland and westward as far as the Parn' Islands. 

 Kecent investigations and explorations have shown that this theory 

 is untenable, that the European and the American birds are not 

 separable, and that Branta bernicla glaucogastra (Brehm) is a noinen 

 fiudum. Even if there were such a subspecies as the white-bellied 

 brant, the name, glaucogastra^ could not be used for it, as it was 

 applied by Brehm to a dark-bellied bird shot on the coast of 

 Germany. 



Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain, who has made two recent visits to Spits- 

 bergen, in 1921 and 1922, writes to me : 



The pale-breasted form is the one which breeds in Spitsbergen. We got over 

 20 birds in 1921 and they were all pale, as also were all those examined in 

 1922. Chapman got 30 or more, and they were all pale too. Koenig speaks 

 of getting darli-breasted birds there, but he figures what he calls the dark- 

 breasted bird, and it does not in the least resemble the uniformly slaty-breasted 

 individuals which visit us in winter. There is some variation among the 

 light-breasted bii'ds, and it is quite evident that the " dark " birds which 

 Koenig refers to are merely specimens in which the brownish-gray markings 

 extend over the whole of the lower breast to the vent, instead of being confined 

 to the breast only. The only really dark-breasted breeding bird I have seen 

 came from Franz-Josef Land, but we get lots of them here (England) in 

 winter. I am inclined to think that the pale-breasted bird extends from 

 America to Spitsbergen in breeding time, and that perhaps farther east the 

 darker-breasted form predominates. 



The two so-called species of brant, Branta hernicla and B. nigri- 

 cans, together have a complete circumpolar breeding range. The 

 western limit of nigricans on the Siberian coast is not definitely 

 known, and future investigation may show that it intergrades with 

 the so-called dark-bellied form of bernicla somewhere in the palae- 

 arctic region. This would explain the occurrence of both light and 

 dark birds in western Europe in winter, for it is well known that 

 certain birds, such as the yellow-billed loon and the Steller eider, 

 migrate from their breeding grounds in Arctic Siberia to the Scan- 



