BRENT GEESE 337 



observed by fishermen several miles out at sea, is invari- 

 ably east, or a trifle to the south of east, pointing towards 

 Denmark, which their instinct tells them is the most 

 northerly point which the state of the ice at that period 

 will permit. Thence they move on northwards by degrees. 

 In 1886, on May 27th (just two months after they had left 

 this coast), I happened to fall in with my winter friends, 

 thousands strong", in the midst of their northward journey. 

 We met off the Norway coast, towards the latitude of 

 Stavanger. The brents were then bound due north, 

 direct for Spitsbergen, where they would thus arrive 

 exactly on their "scheduled date" — that is June 1st. 

 Thus in spring - they follow the retiring- ice-edge north- 

 wards as tenaciously as they retreat before it in autumn. 



In his Geese of Europe and Asia — an exhaustive and admirably 

 illustrated monograph (London : Rowland Ward) — M. Serge Alpheraky of 

 St Petersburg distinguishes the two forms of the Brent goose as dimor- 

 phisms rather than as subspecies, giving the light-bellied race the distinctive 

 trinomial i?. b. glaucogaster for convenience. It was this — the light-bellied 

 race — and the more abundant of the two locally — that was formerly believed 

 to emanate exclusively from Greenland and the Western Arctic. But all 

 the Brents we obtained in Spitsbergen in 1881 were of this description ; 

 and now M. Alpheraky shows that both forms breed (sometimes side by 

 side, as on Kolguev) on the shores and islands of the Eastern Arctic region. 

 Hence it is reasonable to assume that our Northumbrian Brents are, after 

 all, of old world origin. 



Nothing approaching B. nigricans, with its broad white collar encircling 

 the neck, ever occurs on this north-east coast. That species belongs to the 

 far east and the Pacific. 



Note. — The Bernicle geese {Bernicla leucopsis) I have never met with. 

 Though numerous on the Solway and west coast, they are practically un- 

 known on the east — whole decades elapsing between the chance visits of 

 a few stragglers. [I leave the above precisely as it stood in 1st edition. 

 During the subsequent eighteen years, I have only noted two occurrences on 

 the north-east coast.] 



