1 66 Wild Geese 



orange." As an instance of this exceptional colouring, he quotes 

 Cordeaux, who describes a Lincolnshire-shot Grey-lag, whose bill, 

 with the exception of a narrow strip in front of the nail, was orange, 

 and adds that Mr. Frohawk informs him that, in the opinion of certain 

 competent ornithologists, in the Scotch representatives of this Goose 

 the bill is regularly yellow-orange in colour. 



The yellow bill of the Scotch Grey-lag is attributed by the author 

 to their being heavy, well-fed resident birds, witli a thick layer of 

 subcutaneous fat. The Scotch birds, he considers, are entirely 

 non-migratory, though I do not know that this conclusion is 

 supported by any satisfactory evidence, and the more one knows 

 about migration, the less probable does it seem that a typically 

 migratory bird, like the Grey-lag, would remain resident in the same 

 locality throughout the year. Even if we allow, for the sake of 

 argument, that the breeding Geese are resident birds, it is certain 

 that in the outer islands, the number of Grey-lag Geese is very much 

 increased in winter by visitors from the North. There are far more 

 Grey-lags in the Island between October and March than could 

 possibly be accounted for by the total number of breeding-pairs 

 with their broods. This surplus can only be made up of winter- 

 migrants. 



I quite agree that the bills of these Grey-lags, residents or 

 migrants, are yellow-orange, and I believe that to be the colouring 

 of this species wherever it is found. The occasional specimens of 

 Grey-lags I have shot, or which have come into my hands in a fresh 

 state, on the East Coast of England, have had their bills coloured 

 in the same way, and these cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, 

 be considered non-migratory resident birds. Alpheraky figures 

 his Grey-lag (plate 3) with the bill of a uniform rosy flesh tinge, 

 which he maintains is the normal colouration of the Grey-lag, except 

 the adipose Scotch bird, whose bill, laden with fat, has turned yellow. 



British writers, however, do not seem to agree that the Scotch 

 birds have yellow bills ; they one and all describe the bill as flesh- 

 coloured, in their text and in their plates. Howard Saunders, 

 in his invaluable and excellent manual (p. 398) says : " The 

 distinguishing characteristics of the species are . . . the flesh- 

 coloured bill with a white nail." 



For the past two months I have had daily opportunities of 

 examining the colour of the bills of these Geese, both when alive 

 and immediately after death, and I never observed one whose bill 

 was not, in the main, yellow-orange, the all-flesh-coloured bill was 

 entirely absent. 



The difficulty of getting correctly-coloured figures of the soft 

 parts of any bird, more especially such birds as Geese, is very great. 

 Colours fade, change and undergo all kinds of alterations from the 

 moment of death. The changes are largely due to the stoppage of 

 the circulation, and the stagnation of the venous blood, quite 

 irrespective of extravasation from injury. Pure white becomes 



