232 GAME BIMDS OF CALIFORNIA 



towards the prairies and hilly slopes, where the tender young wild oats and 

 grapes offered a tempting pasturage. This early flight lasted about two hours, 

 and as far as the eye could reach the sky was spotted with flock after flock, 

 closely following in each other's wake, until it seemed as though all the geese 

 of California had given rendezvous at this particular point. Between ten and 

 eleven o 'clock they would leave the prairies, first in small squads, then in 

 large masses, settling in the marshes and collecting around the i5on<ls and 

 sloughs thickly edged with heavy reeds. Here, swimming on the water, bath- 

 ing and pluming themselves, they keep up a continued but not unmusical 

 clatter. This jiroves the most propitious time of the day for the hunter, who, 

 under cover of the tall reeds, and guided by their continual cackling, approaches 

 closely enough to deal havoc among them. Discharging one load as they sit 

 on the water and the other as they rise, I have thus seen twenty-three geese 

 gathered from two shots, while many more, wounded and maimed, fluttered away 

 and were lost. At about one o 'clock they leave the marshes and return to feed 

 on the jirairies, flying low and affording the sj^ortsman again an opportunity 

 to stop their career. In the afternoon, about five o 'clock, they finally leave 

 the prairies, and rising high in the air wend their way to the roosting places 

 whence they came in the morning. These were often at a great distance, as 

 I have followed them in their evening flight until they were lost to view. 

 Many, however, roost in the marshes. Our boat, sailing one night down the 

 sloughs leading to Suisun Bay, having, come among them, the noise made as 

 they arose in advance of us, emitting their cry of alarm (their disordered 

 masses being so serried that we could hear their pinions strike each other as 

 they flew), impressed us with the idea that we must have disturbed thousands. 

 Such are the habits of the geese during the winter. Towards spring they 

 separate into smaller flocks and gradually disappear from the country, some 

 few only remaining, probably crippled and unable to follow the more vigorous 

 in their northern migration. 



"During the rainy season in California the plains and valleys, 

 before brown and dry, become clothed in rich verdure, and the 

 nourishing grasses afford sustenance to incredible numbers of these 

 and other geese. Three kinds, the Snow, White-fronted and the pre- 

 sent species, have almost precisely the same habits and the same food 

 during their stay with us, and associate so intimately together that 

 many, if not most, of the flocks contain representatives of all three" 

 (Coues, 1874, pp. 555-556). Although the different species may 

 feed together, other observers have noted that on being disturbed 

 they immediately divide into flocks of their own kind. 



Specimens of this species collected at Los Bafios, Merced County, in 

 November, 1911, had been feeding entirely on grain. The gullet and 

 gizzard of one shot from a flock returning from foraging at 10:30 

 A.M. contained 1,147 grains of barley by actual count; another 1,076 

 grains of barley (Beck, MS). Thus it can be seen that where geese 

 collect by thousands on newly planted grain fields the depredations 

 are serious. Near Windfall Harbor, Alaska, the natives say that this 

 species of goose stops in large numbers, for a short time, to feed on 



