116 GEESE 



her went the gander, who had evidently been crouched on the ground 

 about ten feet away. All five eggs had hatched and the young were 

 already dry. The goslings were surprisingly tame, making no attempt 

 to leave the nest, although both old birds had lit in the lake about fifty 

 yards away and the hen was calling loudly. After a few minutes they 

 did crawl out, but to our surprise came to us as we stood photographing 

 them, utterly ignoring the old geese." Wishing to get photographs of 

 the adults, the photographer "took one of the young and placed it some 

 distance from the nest as a decoy. The minute he backed away, how- 

 ever, it started in pursuit of him, so that finally he had to tether it by 

 the foot to a bunch of grass. Meanwhile the other four seemed perfectly 

 content to sit in my lap, where they were sheltered from the wind; and 

 if I covered them with my hands, would snuggle down and give con- 

 tented little chucking calls. We had these five for two days and they 

 fed readily on finely cut grass and hard-boiled egg. . . . 



"During the first half of July, broods of these geese were seen com- 

 monly back of Igiak and Hooper Bay. When the young are first hatched, 

 the old birds appear to take them to the rivers and sloughs, up and down 

 which they travel, feeding on the banks. It was during this period that 

 we noticed how the glaucous gulls persecuted them. Whenever a brood 

 was encountered as we travelled the sloughs in our boat, the old geese 

 would fly off and the goslings would scatter. Immediately these big 

 gulls gathered, and as soon as a chance offered, would swoop down on a 

 young one. Later, when we attempted to band these geese, this was a 

 serious handicap, as necessarily broods became much scattered and were 

 at the mercy of marauders. Under natural conditions many goslings 

 must be destroyed, as often the old geese were seen at some distance 

 from their voung; and whereve ~ there was a breed, there was almost sure 

 to be a gull or two hanging about 



"From what evidence we could gather, it w r ould seem that the Em- 

 peror Goose never nests farther back than ten miles or so from the coast. 

 As the majority of Eskimo villages in this region are situated near the 

 coast, it is this species that suffers most in their goose drives. Generally 

 the natives go to the same spot each year for their drives, which are made 

 about the end of the first week in August." Of the destruction of these 

 geese by the natives, Nelson (1913) says that while these and myriads of 

 other geese are in the flightless condition, the Eskimos make "a practice 

 of setting up long lines of strong fishnets on the tundras to form pound 

 traps, or inclosures with wide wings leading to them, into which thou- 

 sands were driven and killed for food. The slaughter in this way was 

 very great, for the young were killed at the same time and thrown awav 

 in order to get them out of the way of the next drive. The Esquimos of 

 this region also gather large numbers of eggs of the breeding waterfowl 

 for food and, with the demand for them at the mining camps of the 

 north, a serious menace to the existence of these and other waterfowl 

 might ensue." This description was, of course, published before adop- 

 tion of The Migratory Bird Convention. 



