498 BRITISH BIRDS. 



ANSER BRACHYRHYNCHUS. 

 PINK-FOOTED GOOSE. 



(Plate GO.) 



Anser bracliyrhynclius, Baill. Mem. Soc. rotj. d'cm. cTAhhev. 1833, p. 74 ; et auctorum 



plurimorum — Dei/land 8,- Gerhe, Yarrell, Dresser, Saunders, Sec. 

 Anser phcenicopus, Bartlett, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1839, p. 3. 



The Pink-footccl Goose is a common winter visitor to the coasts of the 

 British Islands^ though it has not yet been known to visit Ireland. It is 

 less common on the south coast of England, and does not yet appear to 

 have been observed in the Shetland Islands. 



The Pink-footed Goose can scarcely be regarded as more than a local 

 race or an island form of the Bean-Goose, certainly breeding on Spitzbergen, 

 most probably on Iceland'^, and possibly on Franz- Josef Land. To the 

 British Islands it is only a winter visitor, most abundant on the Outer 

 Hebrides and on the east coast of England. To the coasts of Scandi- 

 navia, Denmark, and Holland it is a regular visitor on spring and autumn 

 migration, and in winter it occasionally strays as far as the coasts of 

 Belgium and France. Its reported occurrence in India cannot be accepted 

 without more satisfactory evidence. 



The attention of British ornithologists was first directed to the Pink- 

 footed Goose by Mr. Bartlett, the present Superintendent of the Zoological 

 Gardens in Regent's Park, as long ago as 1839 ; but it was afterwards 

 found out that he had been forestalled in his discovery of this species by 

 Mons. Baillon, of Abbeville. The specific distinction of this Goose is 

 very doubtful; the bill is very small, compared with eastern examples of 

 the Bean-Goose, but western examples of the latter are quite as small. 

 The colour of the bill and feet is not constant under the influence of 

 domestication. Mr. Cecil Smith has bred them in confinement for several 

 seasons, and states that some of the young have orange legs and orange on 

 the bill, whilst others have pink legs and pink on the bill, like their parents. 

 It would perhaps be premature to degrade the Pink-footed Goose to the 

 rank of a subspecies, and call it Anser segetmn brachyrhynchus, on the 

 strength of this evidence, since the effects of domestication in changing 

 the colour of birds is well known ; but it looks very much as if the Pink- 



* Dresser identifies the Goose found on Nova Zembla and described by Heuglin 

 (Journ. Oru. 1872, p. 122) as the Pink-footed Goose; but as the colour of the feet is 

 described as brilliant orange, tliere can be no doubt that it was the Bean-Goose, as were 

 also those brought from tlie same island by Capt. ]\rnrl\liam. 



