Almost at once after their arrival on the islands, the emperor 
geese appeared to be mated, the males walking around the females, 
swinging their heads and uttering low love-notes, and incoming flocks 
quickly disintegrated into pairs which moved about together, though 
often congregating with many others on flats and sand-bars. The 
male was extremely jealous and pugnacious, however, and immedi¬ 
ately resented the slightest approach of another toward his choice; 
and this spirit was shown equally when an individual of another spe¬ 
cies chanced to come near. When a pair were feeding, the male 
moved about restlessly, constantly on the alert, and at the first alarm 
the pair drew near each other, and just before taking wing uttered 
a deep, ringing ii-lugh, u-liigh; these, like the flight-notes, having a 
peculiarly deep tone impossible to describe. 
At low tide, as soon as the shore-ice disappeared, the broad mud¬ 
flats along shore were thronged with them in pairs and groups num¬ 
bering up to thirty or forty individuals. They were industriously 
dabbling in the mud for food until satisfied, and then congregated on 
bars, where they sat dozing in the sun or lazily arranging their 
feathers. By lying flat on the ground and creeping cautiously forward 
I repeatedly approached within thirty or forty yards of parties near 
shore without their showing any uneasiness. 
Early in June they began depositing eggs on the flat marshy 
islands bordering the sea all along the middle and southern part of 
the delta. 
The nests were always most numerous in the marshes a short 
distance back from the muddy feeding-grounds, but stray pairs were 
found nesting here and there farther inland on the same tundra, with 
the other species of geese and various other water-fowl. Near the 
seashore, the eggs were frequently laid among the highest driftwood, 
wave-torn scraps of driftwood lying along the highest tide-marks. 
On June 5, a female was found on her eggs on a slight rise in the 
general level. A small gray-bleached fragment of driftwood lay close 
by. The goose must have lain with neck outstretched on the ground, 
as I afterward found was their custom when approached, for the 
Eskimo and I passed within a few feet on each side of her; but, in 
scanning the ground for nesting birds, the general similarity in tint of 
the bird and the obvious stick of driftwood had completely misled our 
sweei)ing glances. We had gone al)out twenty steps beyond when 
the goose uttered a loud alarm-note and flew swiftly away. The 
ground was so absolutely bare of any cover that the three eggs on 
which she had been sitting were plainly visible from where we stood. 
60 
