RED-BREASTED GOOSE. 515 



ANSER RUFICOLLIS. 



RED-BREASTED GOOSE. 



(Plate 61.) 



Anser ruficollis, Pall. Spicil. Zool. vi. p. 21, pi. v. (1769); et auctorum pluii- 

 niOT^XIa.—{Temminck), {Begland Sf Gerbe) Naumcmn, (Dresser), (Saunders), 

 &c. 



Anas torquata, S. G. Gmel. Raise Russl. ii. p. 179, pi. 14 (1774). 



Anas ruficollis (Pall.), Lath. Gen. Si/n. Suppl. i. p. 297 (1787). 



Bernicla ruficollis (Pall.), Bote, Isis, 1822, p. -568. 



Rufibreuta ruficollis (Pall.), Bonap. Compt. Bend, xliii. p. 648 (1856). 



The occurrence of the Red-breasted Goose in our islands is purely acci- 

 dental, but its breeding-range is situated far enough north for occasional 

 stragglers from the eastern shores of the Kara Sea to mingle with the 

 flocks of Brent and Bernacle Geese which migrate to our shores in autumn 

 from Fi-anz-Josef Land, Nova Zembla, and Spitzbergen. Of the half- 

 dozen authentic specimens obtained in this country, one example was 

 brought down with the same shot that killed twenty-three Bernacle Geese 

 and a second was shot out of a flock of Brent Geese. The first recorded 

 British example was said by Tunstall to have been shot in the severe frost 

 early in the year 1776, in the neighbourhood of London; it was figured by 

 Bewick, and is still preserved in the Newcastle Museum. The last example 

 was obtained on the 6th of January 1871, at Maldon, in Essex (Harting, 

 ' Zoologist,' 1871, p. 2514). Between these two dates eleven other examples 

 are recorded : three of these having only been seen, may be at once dismissed 

 as doubtful. An example was caught alive in Yorkshire, which Latham 

 stated to have died in 1785, after having been kept nearly ten years in con- 

 finement (Lath. Gen. Syn. iii. p. 455) . The example said to have been shot 

 in Norfolk in 1805 does not appear to have been satisfactorily determined, 

 nor is there any proof of the correct identification of the examj)les said to 

 have been obtained in Cambridgeshire during the severe winter of 1813. 

 An example shot at Berwick-on-Tweed in 1818 is still preserved in the 

 British Museum (Fleming, Brit. Animals, p. 128). Two examples have 

 been obtained in Devonshire, one in 1828, and one in 1837 (Moore, 

 Loudon's Mag. Nat. Hist. 1837, p. 366). Two Irish records arc more 

 than doubtful, as is also the example said to have been shot about 1845 

 in Durham. 



So far as is known, the Red-breasted Goose is confined durin"- the 

 breeding-season to the lower valleys of the Obb and the Yenesay above 

 the limit of forest-growth. It passes through South-western Siberia and 



