110 INDIAN DUCKS 



Measurements. — " Wing 13'7 to 14'1 inches, tail 5'90 to CO, culmen I'O 

 to ri, tarsus 2 to 2'04." {Alphcrahi.)_ 



Hartert gives the wing as 345 to 3G5 mm., hill 23 to 26 mm. 



Distribution. — The Red-breasted Goose has been found to occur 

 practically throughout Europe, though there is as yet nothing on 

 record as to its appearance in Spain. To the extreme west it is 

 rare, and in the west generally less common than in the east ; it 

 occurs in Persia and Turkestan, so that its occasional occurrence in 

 India is by no means surprising. 



Its first probable appearance in India was recorded in the old 

 ' Oriental Sporting Magazine,' and from that time (1836) until, in 

 the pages of the Bombay Nat. Hist. Society's Journal, I noted Mr. 

 Mundy's having seen it in Dibrngarh, no one had ever come across it 

 again. Mr. Mundy saw the bird on the Brahmapootra, and, though 

 he failed to obtain a specimen, he took very careful notes of its 

 colouration, which, on being repeated to me, were ample enough to 

 enable me to identify the bird as the Pied-breasted Goose. Finally, 

 in March, 1907, I myself was fortunate enough to see five specimens 

 on a chur in the Brahmapootra, just below Gowhatty ; they arose a 

 long way off as the steamer drove upstream towards them, but turned 

 and flew past us within 60 to 100 yards, and there could have been 

 no possible chance of mistaking them. 



Nidification. — It breeds throughout the tundras of Western 

 Siberia, and is also said by Pearson to breed in Lapland (' Ibis,' 

 1896, p. 210). 



Middendorff got its eggs on the Boganida, slightly incubated, on 

 the 25th June, Seebohm took its nest on the Yenesei in late June, 

 1877, and Popham on the same river in 1895. In the latter case the 

 four nests found were taken at the foot of a cliff, also tenanted 

 by a peregrine falcon. The eggs are described as creamy-white, 

 and much like those of the bean-goose, but with a very fragile shell, 

 through which the green tint of the lining membrane shows. 



The eggs vary from 2'71 to 2'83 inches in length, and from 1'73 

 to 1"77 in breadth, and there were seven, eight, or nine eggs in the 

 full clutch. 



Zhitnikov, as quoted by Alpheraky, gives a most interesting 

 account of this most beautiful goose. He writes : — 



