untrimmed berry rows fascinate them. Diirinj; mating-season the male sings 

 all the time when he is not eating, singing as he flies from perch to perch, and 

 like others of the family, has been accused of night serenades. We are unable 

 to know certainly if it is our grosbeak or the mocker that wakes us at midnight. 

 It is probably the mocker, who has stolen notes from all the birds. 



The Canada Goose {Bmnta canadensis) 

 By Lynds Jones 



Synonyms. — "Wild Goose" ; Common Wild Goose. 



Description. — Adult: Head and neck glossy black; a large white triangular 

 patch on either cheek, the two usually confluent on throat — occasionally an 

 indistinct white collar at base of black; back and wings rich grayish brown; 

 fore-breast and below lighter grayish brown, tipped with pale fulvous or grayish 

 white; heavier toned on sides, where presenting a shingled appearance and 

 shading into color of back ; lower belly, under tail-coverts, longer upper tail-coverts 

 and flanks well up on rump, pure white ; rump and tail black ; primaries blacken- 

 ing at tips; bill black; feet dusky. Immature: Similar, but white of cheeks 

 and throat more or less mixed with blackish. Length 35.00-42.00 (889.-1066.8) ; 

 wing 20.00 (508) ; tail 7.00 (177.8) ; bill 2.30 (58.4) ; tarsus 3.55 (90.2). 



Recognition Marks. — Eagle size ; black head and neck with white cheek- 

 patches, and large size distinctive. 



Nest, on the ground, on a cliff, or in a tree (a deserted Osprey's nest and 

 the like), Hned with down. Eggs, 4 or 5, light greenish buff, or buffy white. 

 Av. size, 3.52x2.30 (89.4x58.4). 



Range. — Temperate North America, breeding in the northern United States 

 and British Provinces ; south in winter to Mexico. 



HONK, honk — honk, honk! What a stirring sound is that which sum- 

 mons us from whatever task indoors, and hurries us out hatless, breathless, 

 into the crisp March air to behold a company of Wild Geese passing forward 

 into the frosty North! Honk, honk! We think madly of our gun upstairs, 

 for the Geese are provokingly near, and we hear the thrilling swish of the 

 low-sweeping wings; but we take it out in great boasts to our similarly hatless 

 neighbor, of what we could have done if the gun had been put together and 

 we had known that those foolish Geese were coming right over town. And 

 when the great birds become a row of trailing points on the northern sky, 

 a fever of strange unrest bums within our veins, and we wonder through what 

 ancestral folly our wings were clipped, and our race condemned to unceasmg 



For the Canada Goose there are but two points of the compass. North 

 and South ; and unlike most migrants, he does not go by the map, nor follow 

 favorite paths through the air, but flies straight over hill and dale, city and 



490 



