Almost at once after their arrival on the islands, the emperor 

 geese appeared to be mated, the males walking around the females, 

 swinging their heads and uttering low love-notes, and incoming flocks 

 quickly disintegrated into pairs which moved about together, though 

 often congregating with many others on flats and sand-bars. The 

 male was extremely jealous and pugnacious, however, and immedi- 

 ately resented the slightest approach of another toward his choice; 

 and this spirit was shown equally when an individual of another spe- 

 cies chanced to come near. When a pair were feeding, the male 

 moved about restlessly, constantly on the alert, and at the first alarm 

 the pair drew near each other, and just before taking wing uttered 

 a deep, ringing u-lugh, u-lugh; these, like the flight-notes, having a 

 peculiarly deep tone impossible to describe. 



At low tide, as soon as the shore-ice disappeared, the broad mud- 

 flats along shore were thronged with them in pairs and groups num- 

 bering up to thirty or forty individuals. They were industriously 

 dabbling in the mud for food until satisfied, and then congregated on 

 bars, where they sat dozing in the sun or lazily arranging their 

 feathers. By lying flat on the ground and creeping cautiously forward 

 I repeatedly approached within thirty or forty yards of parties near 

 shore without their showing any uneasiness. 



Early in June they began depositing eggs on the flat marshy 

 islands bordering the sea all along the middle and southern part of 

 the delta. 



The nests were always most numerous in the marshes a short 

 distance back from the muddy feeding-grounds, but stray pairs were 

 found nesting here and there farther inland on the same tundra, with 

 the other species of geese and various other water-fowl. Near the 

 seashore, the eggs were frequently laid among the highest driftwood, 

 wave-torn scraps of driftwood lying along the highest tide-marks. 

 On June 5, a female was found on her eggs on a slight rise in the 

 general level. A small gray-bleached fragment of driftwood lay close 

 by. The goose must have lain with neck outstretched on the ground, 

 as I afterward found was their custom when approached, for the 

 Eskimo and I passed within a few feet on each side of her; but, in 

 scanning the ground for nesting birds, the general similarity in tint of 

 the bird and the obvious stick of driftwood had completely misled our 

 sweeping glances. We had gone about twenty steps beyond when 

 the goose uttered a loud alarm-note and flew swiftly away. The 

 ground was so absolutely bare of any cover that the three eggs on 

 which she had been sitting were plainly visible from where we stood. 



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