BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 77 



BRANTA CANADENSIS (L. ). (172.) 

 CANADA GOOSE. 



About the twentieth of March the Canada Geese come in 

 large flocks, and at once possess the open, prairie lakes, and 

 those embraced in extensive marshes. Their honkings at once 

 enlist the interest of everybody who is waiting impatiently 

 for the spring. The long, triangular flock will soon have 

 everybody out of doors gazing at it wherever it passes. It is 

 not much to be wondered at surely if those honkings are 

 melody in more than one sense to the people of this latitude 

 after a six-months bird silence, because of its announcements 

 and its prophecy. Arriving uniformly in the first half of the 

 day, we feel quite assured then that they have come to stay 

 for a time at least, while tho&e reaching us later, and during 

 the night, pass directly on further north. Unlike most other 

 wheat producing countries, Minnesota grows very little that is 

 sown in the fall, and hence has little inducements to offer 

 these birds in this respect upon their arrival, but her 

 meadows, and the products of what has just been planted in 

 wheat, soon supply them abundantly, and they drift about 

 hither and yonder till about the 25th to the 30th of April, 

 when they disappear as if they had been spirited away as 

 mysteriously as the swallows formerly disappeared upon the 

 approach of winter. They have paired and entered upon their 

 great mission of nidification, a little removed from the ponds 

 in the marshes, or on the " high-and-dry " islands in the lakes 

 and larger water courses. The nests are formed of such 

 materials as are in the locality chosen, more frequently sticks, 

 coarse weeds, and grass, and are lined with feathers. They 

 lay from eight to ten eggs which are too well known to need 

 description. Nests have been found with the full complement 

 of eggs in them as early as May 1st, but it is generally later 

 than that. The male shares the confinement of incubation, at 

 least while the female seeks her accustomed food. Nothing 

 can exceed the devotion of both parents not only until the 

 young are fully grown, but until " they are of age " the follow- 

 ing spring. 



Their fondness for the succulent blades of the volunteer 

 wheat, and the soft grains of the waste of the preceding crop, 

 costs them their lives by thousands in the fall months, when 

 they are shot from holes in the ground surrounded by artificial 

 decoys. 



