WILD GEESE 137 



Mr. Whealton says the above applies as well to the 

 breeding of black and white swan, with the exception 

 that they may be purchased at any time except in the 

 coldest weather; the white swan breed in the late spring 

 and the black Australians irregularly throughout the 

 year.* 



Mr. Warren R. Leach, whose experience in the breed- 

 ing of wild water fowl (especially the Canada or common 

 wild goose) extends over a period of more than thirty 

 years, wrote for me the following account of breeding 

 wild geese in captivity, which I printed in The Amateur 

 Sportsman (June, 1910) : 



"It was some time in the seventies that my brother 

 called my attention to an advertisement of a party in Fort 

 Dodge, la., in one of the sporting magazines who offered 

 Canada wild geese for sale. Geese were then nesting 

 plentifully in parts of that State, and thpse offered for 

 sale were goslings captured from the adjacent sloughs. I 

 mention the pair which we purchased because of the fre- 

 quent statements made that wild geese mate for life. Un- 

 doubtedly this is ordinarily true, but there are exceptions. 

 This pair never nested, and we finally bought another 

 male and two females. The Iowa gander promptly se- 

 lected one of the new females for a wife, and they raised 

 young for years, while he drove his former mate out of 

 his sight at all times. She never mated again and was 

 evidently a barren goose, and the gander undoubtedly was 

 aware of it. 



"In 1892 I obtained a large wild gander shot from a 



♦Mr. J. W. Whealton's "List, Description and Prices." This will be 

 sent to anyone on application to Whealton's Wild Water Fowl Farm, 

 Chincoteague Island, Va. 



