191 



BRENT GEESE. 



FOR coast-fowling by night (wrote Colonel Hawker), the 

 Wigeon is like the fox for hunting it shows the finest sport 

 of anything in Great Britain. And the same remark applies 

 to the Brent Goose for coast-fowling by day. The wildest 

 and gamest, as well as the most numerous, of all our winter 

 wildfowl, the Brent Geese, in hard weather and favourable 

 seasons, afford right royal sport to the punt-gunner, and 

 with this additional advantage, that the pursuit can be en- 

 joyed exclusively during the hours of daylight. The follow- 

 ing notes are the result of several years' tolerably close 

 observation of the habits of these birds on the north-east 

 coast, to which district the notes exclusively refer ; for in 

 other parts of the British coast their habits and migrations 

 appear to differ to some extent from those herein described. 



Though they are so abundant, and on many parts of our 

 coasts the chief object of pursuit of the punter in mid- 

 winter, yet on the north-east coast the Brents are quite the 

 last to arrive, of all the host of migratory fowl which find a 

 refuge on our shores from the rigours of the northern winter. 

 The Wigeon appear in September, the Grey Geese and most 

 of the Diving- ducks are all here before the close of October, 

 but the Brents delay their arrival in force till the new year, 

 or even later. The date of their arrival on this coast, as 

 well as the numbers which visit us, are evidently regulated 

 by the state of the weather at the different points of their 

 range. Thus, while they have completed their domestic 

 duties in Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, and left those 

 desolate regions by the end of August or early in September, 

 yet they do not reach our coast in force for some four months 

 afterwards. They appear to possess so strong a hyperborean 



