LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL 179 



to tlie fact that on its mi<j:rations to and from this favorite resort 

 its seldom straijcgles far from its direct route to and from its un- 

 known breedin": range. To find the breeding resorts of the bhie 

 goose is one of the most alhiring of the imsolved problems in Ameri- 

 can ornithology. It is really surprising that such a large and con- 

 spicuous species, which is numerically so abundant, can disappear 

 so completely during the breeding season. 



Spring. — Numerous records from various observers indicate a 

 heavy spring migration northward through the Mississippi Valley 

 and over the Great Lakes to James Bay and Hudson Bay, but be- 

 yond there the species vanishes completely. No one knows where 

 the blue goose goes to spend the summer and none of the numerous 

 Arctic explorers have ever found its breeding grounds. 



The blue goose migrates generally in flocks by itself and usually 

 the old white-headed birds are in separate flocks from the young 

 birds; but occasionally one or more dark-blue geese may be seen 

 leading a flock of pure white-snow geese, which makes a striking 

 picture. The main flight in the spring seems to pass up the east 

 side of James Bay. 



Owen Griffith says, in a letter published by Mr. W. E. Saunders 

 (1917) : 



About 3 miles north of Fort George Post there is a big bay (salt water) 

 with lots of mud and grass at low tide, and in the spring almost every flock 

 of wavies and other geese feed in this bay on their way north ; the Indians 

 never hunt them on their arrival in this bay, but gather on a long hill on 

 the other side and then shoot at the birds as they are going off ; they 

 generally get up in small flocks, and as they have to rise considerably to clear 

 the hill they can be seen getting up some time before they get to the hill, and 

 then everyone runs along a path and tries to get right under where the flock 

 is going to pass ; of course, if three or four flocks get up at the same time, 

 there is shooting on different parts of the hill and the hunters are apt to 

 spoil one another. The Indians say that once these birds leave this bay that 

 they do not feed again till they get far north (Hudson Straits or Baffin Land) 

 in fact a wavey's nest is a great rarity. Strange to say they do not feed in 

 this bay in the fall. 



Dr. Donald B. MacMillan, who spent the spring and part of the 

 summer of 1921 at Bowdoin Harbor in southern Baffin Land, says 

 that the blue geese and snow geese migrate from Cape Wolsten- 

 holme across to southern Bafim Land. He was told by the natives 

 of that country that botli of these geese breed in immense numbers 

 in the marshy lands near some lakes in the interior, a region too 

 difficult to reach and too remote from where his ship was frozen in 

 until August. 



Nesting. — There seems to be no authentic record of the finding of 

 a nest of the blue goose and, so far as I know, the nest and eggs in a 

 wild state are unknown to science. All that has been published on 



