THE EMPEROR GOOSE 



By EDWARD W. NELSON 



THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF AUDUBON SOCIETIES 



Educational Leaflet No. 64 



Among all the wild geese which make their summer home in the far 

 North both in the Old and the New World the Emperor Goose is one 

 of the least known and most beautiful. Its snowy white head, dusky 

 throat, satiny gray body, on which each feather is marked by a black 

 crescent and white margin, and the brilliant orange feet, make a strik- 

 ingly handsome combination of colors. When the males first arrive on 

 their breeding-grounds in spring, the beauty of their plumage is remark- 

 able, but much of its satiny luster goes with the advancing season. 



Although the breeding-range of the Emperor Goose covers parts of 

 two continents, yet perhaps it is more restricted in its 

 territory than any other species of northern goose. 

 Its summer home lies along the coast on both sides 

 of Bering Straits, but so far as we know the vast majority of them breed 

 in Alaska, mainly on the islands of the lower part of the Yukon delta, 

 and thence southward nearly to the mouth of the Kuskokwim River. 

 Considerable numbers also breed on St. Lawrence Island, and on the 

 coast of northeastern Asia, where they arrive as soon as the tundra is 

 free from snow. Their main wintering place appears to be on the 

 southern side of the Peninsula of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. 

 The Aleuts know them as "Beach Geese," owing to their persistent occu- 

 pation of the seashore. Stray individuals wander down the American 

 coast in winter even to northern California, and occasionally are driven 

 by gales to Hawaii. 



When I was preparing to go to Alaska, some years ago, the Emperor 

 Goose, Steller's and Fischer's Eiders, and the Aleutian Tern were names 

 to conjure with, and the anticipation of studying these birds in their 

 remote northern homes filled me with joy. In the North, my head- 

 quarters were at St. Michael, on the coast of Bering Sea, about sixty 

 miles north of the Yukon delta. Here Emperor Geese rarely occurred 

 except stray parties visitors to the marshy coast-plain in fall. I made 

 a sledge-journey one winter through the Yukon delta and across the 

 tundras southward to the Kuskokwim, and found the 

 Eskimos in that area wearing "parkies," or outer gar- 

 ments, made of the skins of Emperor Geese sewed to- 

 gether, and learned that great numbers of these birds nested there each 

 spring rarely above the upper limit of the tide in the sluggish streams 

 of this low plain. All available- observations of the habits of this bird 



