BIRD NAMES. . 9 



gray with their flight-feathers ("primaries" and "secondaries") 

 black or nearly so ; rump light gray or more whitish ; coloration 

 of bill and legs about as in previously described snow geese.* 



Names of the whiter birds, as follows : SNOW GOOSE : WHITE 

 BRANT (latter name very general in the West) : WAVEY or COM- 

 MON WAVEY of Hudson's Bay region. J. W. Long, in his Amer- 

 ican Wild Fowl Shooting, speaks of their being known in the 

 West somewhere as FISH BRANT (an absurdly inappropriate and 

 libellous designation). 



Colonel J. H. Powel writes me from his home in Newport, 

 K. I. : "I have heard it called MEXICAN GOOSE in this State (I 

 have killed several here)."f Baird, Brewer, and Eidgway record 

 RED GOOSE as in use on the Jersey coast (a name mentioned also 

 in Wilson, 1814), suggested I suppose by color of bill and legs, 

 and the reddish stains. 



These birds visit the Delaware regularly, many of them 

 congregating near Bay Side, Cumberland Co., N. J., the species 

 being there known as TEXAS GOOSE. 



Names of Chen ccerulescens, as follows: BLUE GOOSE: 

 BLUE SNOW GOOSE: BLUE WAVEY: BLUE -WINGED GOOSE: 

 WHITE-HEADED GOOSE or WHITE-HEAD: BALD-HEADED BRANT 

 or BALD BRANT. 



Though snow geese are rare in most of our Eastern States, 

 they are exceedingly common in many parts of the West, col- 

 lecting in countless numbers on the prairies, or transforming 

 river sandbars into islands of glistening snow. They decoy less 

 readily than the Canadian and Hutchins's geese, and fly much 

 higher while passing to and from their feeding-grounds. 



* Since writing the above, I have become thoroughly convinced that C. 

 ccerulescens is a species by itself, distinct from the other geese herein described. 



t In Bogardus's Field, Cover, and Trap Shooting, edited by Charles J. 

 Foster, we read of these birds, with species Nos. 2 and 5, being known as 

 " Mexican geese " in portions of the "West, this term distinguishing them 

 collectively from the "common wild goose," No. 1. 



