286 SWIMMERS. 



summer. They make their appearance at first m flocks of 

 twenty or thirty, which are readily decoyed within gunshot by 

 the hunters, who set up stales, or stuffed birds, and imitate their 

 call. Two or three are so frequently killed at a shot, in this 

 way, that the usual price of a Wild Goose is a single charge of 

 ammunition. This vernal flight of the Geese continues from 

 about the middle of April to the same time in May ; their ap- 

 pearance of course coinciding with the thawing of the swamps 

 and marshes, though their usual food of grass and berries is 

 accessible at most times when not buried up in the snow. 

 These fruits are often, indeed, only mellowed by the frost, and 

 when stripped of their wintry wreath are again ready for food, 

 as they were in the autumn before their disappearance beneath 

 the snow. At such times, according to Dr. Richardson, the 

 Wild Goose makes an abundant repast of the farinaceous ber- 

 ries of the silvery buckthorn as well as of other kinds which have 

 escaped destruction. After feeding in a desultory manner for 

 about three weeks, these birds retire from the shores of Hud- 

 son Bay, their great rendezvous, and disperse in pairs through 

 the country between the 50th and 67th parallels, to breed, but 

 are seldom or never seen on the coasts of the Arctic Sea ; yet 

 Mr. Audubon found them breeding on the shores of Labrador. 

 They lay six or seven greenish-white eggs in a coarse nest 

 usually made on the ground, but some pairs occasionally breed 

 on the banks of the Saskatchewan, in trees, making use, on 

 these occasions, of the deserted eyries of the Ravens or Fishing 

 Hawks. The call, or honk, is imitated by a prolonged nasal 

 pronunciation of the syllable wook frequently repeated. 



Solitude and suitable food seem principally to influence the 

 Canada Goose in the selection of its breeding-place ; it is there- 

 fore not improbable but that many pairs pass the period of 

 reproduction in the swampy and retired marshes of the Great 

 Northwestern Lakes. At any rate, in the month of March 

 (1 810) many Wild Geese were nesting in the shave-rush bot- 

 toms of the Missouri no farther up than Fire Prairie, consider- 

 ably below the junction of the river Platte ; so that the breed- 

 ing range of the Canada Goose probably extends through not 



