66 Bird-Life in Labrador. 



— the best guu for shooting I ever had in my iiands — and 

 gave it a charge. Far away as it was, the old goose doubled 

 up its wings and tumbled head over heels to a block of ice 

 in the very middle of the passage before us. The bird was 

 wounded, not killed. Then began the fun. As fast as we 

 pulled from one block of ice to another the goose would hop 

 just so far ahead, keeping up a most vociferous scoulding at 

 us meanwhile. Work as we would we could not lesson the 

 distance, and after nearly four hours of the iiardest kind of 

 toil we left the goose and began to turn our attention to getting 

 home again. It took us some hours to get out the passage 

 into which we had worked our way, but we accomplished it 

 at last and reached our destination about dark. The Canada 

 goose is not rare all along the cc^ast, but it seldom stops, except 

 here and there, over a night or two. We do not call it a rep- 

 resentative bird of the reo-iou. 



BRANT GOOSE 



Bcrnida hrcnta. — (Pall.) Stepii. 



The brant goose is much more common in the lower j)ari of 

 the ])rovince tiian on the Labrador coast proper. From Cape 

 Whittle westward along the north shore it is by no means 

 rare, and often even abundant. I saw a number of good sized 

 flocks at and near Mingan and even had an opportunity of 

 tasting this delicious wildfowl. I should hardly call it a bird 

 of Labrador, though in the sense that the word Labrador is so 

 often used (although wrongly) as comprising all the north 

 siiore, it is by no means a rare migrant, occurring in flocks 

 just offshore and even a short distance up the livers along 

 the coast. 



DUSKY DUCK BLACK DUCK 



Ana^ ob.scura. — Gm. 



This is the most common fresh water duck of Labrador, 



