BEAN GOOSE. 21 



ANSEE SEGETUM (Gmelin). 

 BEAN GOOSE. 



With our present knowledge of the habits and local 

 distribution of the pink-footed goose, as a regular and 

 abundant visitant to this county in autumn and winter, 

 comes the question whether the true Anser segetum, or 

 Bean Goose, was not always the rarer of the two ? 

 Whether the " small grey goose," as Hunt terms it, did 

 not in former days, as now, predominate in those im- 

 mense flocks, or " gaggles " (to use the more correct 

 term of the ancient fowler), which frequented the wide 

 open fields on the western side of the county? Lord 

 Leicester is inclined to believe that, prior to the iden- 

 tification of the goose shot by himself at Holkham, 

 in the winter of 1841, as the pink-footed, nearly all 

 the geese frequenting that neighbourhood, belonged 

 (judging from their habits) to this newly established 

 species; and since that date he can recall but one 

 example of the bean goose, and a few white-fronted, as 

 having occurred amongst the hundreds of pink-footed 

 geese killed on his estate. That the pink-footed goose, 

 moreover, is by no means confined to the vicinity of 

 the coast, but is met with in large numbers far inland 

 at Wretham, as well as in the once favourite haunts of 

 the bean goose about Westacre, Walton, and Anmer, 

 I have already shown ; and it is fair to presume, there- 

 fore, that such has been always the case, and that our 

 earlier records of wild geese in such localities may be 

 considered as applicable to both species. 



Whatever its former status, however, in Norfolk, 

 there can be no question that the bean goose (amongst 

 the grey geese) now ranks, in point of scarcity, next 

 to the grey-lag,* as evidenced by the few examples 



* Mr. J. H. Gurney informs me he has remarked in Leadenhall 

 Market that the bean goose has been scarcer of late years, in pro- 



