BARNACLE GOOSE 



111 



LIFE STORY 



The Barnacle Goose, an Old World species, is a fairly frequent visi- 

 tor to our eastern seaboard, usually in the autumn. According to an an- 

 cient Norse belief, the first appearance of the Barnacle Goose was said to 

 be in the form of a barnacle shell, adhering to old, water-soaked logs, 

 trees or other pieces of wood taken from the sea. From this fable sprang 

 the name of the bird. Of this goose-bearing 

 tree, Gerard, in his "Herbal" published in 

 1597 gives the following account, based on his 

 personal experience, of a shell-covered rotten 

 tree which he dragged out of the sea between 

 Dover and Romney, in England. In some of 

 the adhering shells he found .... "living things 

 without forme or shape; in others, which were 

 nearer come to ripeness, living things that were 

 very naked, in shape like a birde; in others, the 

 birds covered with soft downe, the shell half 

 open, and the birde readie to fall out, which 

 no doubt were the foules called Barnakles" 

 (Wilson, 1832). The same writer describes a 

 tree from the fruit of which develops the Bar- 

 nacle Goose. Of this tree he says. . . ."this won- 

 der of England, for the which God's name be 

 ever honoured and praised. There are to be 

 found in the north parts of Scotland, and in the islands adjacent, called 

 Orchades, certaine trees whereon do grow certaine shells of a white col- 

 our tending to russett, wherein are contained little living things, which 

 shells in time of maturitie do open and out of them do grow those little 

 living creatures, which falling in the w r ater do become fowles, which we 

 call Barnakles, and in Lancashire tree-geese, but the other that do fall 

 upon the land perish and come to nothing" (Thomson, 1934). The 

 worthy naturalist was evidently in error as the breeding grounds of this 

 species were definitely discovered in 1921, and while the young do first 

 see the light of day in very strange places, yet the circumstances are not 

 as incredible as those described by Gerard 324 years earlier. 



The breeding grounds are in eastern Greenland and in Spitsbergen. 

 The Oxford expeditions in 1921 and 1922 succeeded in locating a num- 

 ber of nests of this species in Spitsbergen, and of the nesting habits 

 the Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain, in notes quoted by Bent (1925), says: 

 "Probably in order to escape the attentions of the Arctic foxes this 

 species has acquired the habit of nesting on ledges and hollows in 

 precipitous bluffs, and even on the tops of isolated pinnacles of rock. 

 .... The gander stands close by his mate on watch, and his white face 



may be detected with a good glass from a considerable distance 



The sites varied to some extent, some nests were on gently sloping decliv- 

 ities, sparsely covered with lichens and mosses, at the foot of a low cliff 



Goose-bearing tree, as illus- 

 trated in Gerard's "Herb- 

 al/' 



