164 BULLETIN 130, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Has been taken in Chile (Concepcion, June and September), Peru 

 (Eten, October 11, 1899), Bolivia (Tatarenda and Lake Titacaca), 

 Ecuador (Sarayacu and Peripa), Panama, Guatemala, Mexico (Ori- 

 zaba, Jalapa, Matamoras, and Esquinapa), and southern Texas 

 (Brownsville, July 22, 1891), and it may breed at some or all of these 

 places. 



Winter range. — Includes the breeding range. The records for 

 western South America and Central America may represent winter 

 wanderings. 



Casual records. — Has wandered widely in North America to Mary- 

 land (Elkton, September 8, 1905), Massachusetts (Maiden, August 27, 

 1889), Vermont (Albury Springs, September 26, 1857), and Wiscon- 

 sin (near Newville, November, 1870). Some of these may be escapes 

 from captivity. 



CHEN HYPERBOREA HYPERBOREA (Pallas) 

 SNOW GOOSE 



HABITS 



As fully explained under the next subspecies, a careful study of 

 the available specimens of birds and eggs, from various portions of 

 the breeding range and the winter range of this species, has dem- 

 onstrated that, while the greater snow goose {nivalis) occupies a 

 limited breeding range in northern Greenland and adjacent lands 

 and a narrow winter range on the Atlantic coast, the lesser snow 

 goose {hyperhorea) is a much more abundant bird of much wider 

 distribution. It breeds along the entire Arctic coast of this conti- 

 nent and on the islands north of it, from Alaska to Baffin Land. Its 

 winter range extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but it is very 

 rare east of the Mississippi Valley and much more abundant from 

 there westward. It is especially abundant in winter in California, 

 Texas, and Mexico. 



SpHng. — The breeding grounds of the snow goose are so far 

 north that we know very little about them in their summer home. 

 They are known to us mainly as winter residents or as migrants. 

 The lesser snow goose seems to have two main lines of flight in the 

 spring, one from the Gulf coast directly northward through the 

 Mississippi Valley and the Athabaska-Mackenzie region, or Hud- 

 son Bay route, to the Arctic coast, and the other from California 

 northward, by an overland route west of the mountains, to north- 

 ern Alaska and then eastward to the mouth of the Mackenzie River 

 or beyond it. The Alaska route is not well known, and it may 

 be that many, perhaps a majority, of the birds pass northeastward 

 across the mountains to the Mackenzie Valley long before they 



