BRENT- AND BARNACLE-GEESE 1G9 



of the body till only the hinder half is above water, duck-fashion. 

 They appear never actually to dive save when wounded. 



"Just at dark," says the author just quoted, "the whole host rise 

 on the wing together and make for the open sea. In the morning 

 they have come in by companies and battalions, but at night they go 

 out in one solid army. . . . The whole host, perhaps ten thousand 

 strong, here massed in dense phalanxes, elsewhere in columns trail- 

 ing off into long skeins, Vs, or rectilineal formations of every con- 

 ceivable shape (but always with a certain formation) out they go full 

 one hundred yards high, while their loud clanging defiance 'honk, 

 honk ! torrick, tor-rick] and its running accompaniments of lower croaks 

 and shrill bi- tones, resounds for miles around." 



Of the breeding habits of the brent-goose we know practically 

 nothing, and the same is true of the barnacle. But Mr. Trevor- Battye 

 has given us a vivid account of the fate which overtakes thousands of 

 these birds annually on Kolguev at the moulting season. 1 When the 

 birds are at their most helpless stage their island retreat is invaded 

 by the natives in boats, who contrive to get behind the host so as 

 to cut them off' from the sea and drive them inland into a huge net 

 arranged somewhat after the fashion of a duck-decoy net. The driving 

 is carried on with all the stealth imaginable, for among the swarm are 

 hundreds of " grey geese " -bean- and whitefronted, and these, as 

 yet, can fly. If they take the alarm, the brents, the birds which 

 alone are coveted, will scatter in all directions. Soon, however, all 

 have been driven into the water, and towards their doom ; and now 

 the grey geese rise and circle round in hundreds, till they are lost in the 

 mist. Some, however, have lost their quills, and these, taking alarm, 

 slowly sink themselves. " First they laid out their long necks flat on the 

 water, then, as the boats came nearer they sank their bodies till the 

 water was almost over their backs. They looked like bits of stick. 

 When a boat approached a bird it would just sink its head and shoot 

 forward under the water. They never went down like diving ducks." 



1 Icebound on Kolgnei', p. 219. 

 VOL. IV. Y 



