Appendix 



A Specific Note on the Wild-Geese of Spain 



The Greylag Goose {Anser civereus) is the 011I3' sp(!cies we need here consider. 

 For of the many hundreds of wild-geese that Ave have shot and examined 

 during the eighteen years since the publication of JFild Spain, every one has 

 proved to be a Greylag. This is the more remarkable inasmuch as an allied 

 form, the Bean-Goose, was supposed in earlier days to occur in Spain, though 

 relatively in small numbers. Col. Irby estimated the Bean-Geese as one to 

 200 of the Greylags ; but no such proportion any longer exists, at least 

 in the delta of the Guadalquivir, where, during eighteen years, hardly a single 

 Bean-Goose has been obtained.^ 



This abandonment of southern Spain by the Bean-Goose (presuming it 

 was ever found therein) appears inexplicable. The species has lately been 

 recognised as divisible into various races or subspecies (differing chieffy in 

 the form and colour of the beak),- for Avhich reason it may here be recorded 

 that of the few Bean-Geese examined twenty years ago in Spain, the beak 

 was invariably dai'k to below the nasal orifice, with a dark tip, and an inter- 

 mediate band of rufous-chestnnt. 



Of the other three members of the genus, the Pink- footed Goo.se {Anser 

 hrachyrhijnchus) has never occurred in Spain ; Avhile neither the white-fronted nor 

 the lesser white-fronted species {A. albifrons and A. erythroini)^, L.) have ever 

 been recorded save in an isolated instance in either case. We have never 

 met Avith any one of them — indeed, the only Avild-goose in our records, other 

 than Greylag and half-a-dozen Bean-Geese, is a single Bernacle (IJcniicIa leucopsis), 

 one of three that AA^as .shot at Santolalla by our late friend Mr. William Garvey. 



Of the Greylags that Avinter in Andalucia, the great majority are adults — 

 that is (presuming our diagnosis to be correct), scarcely one in four is a gosling 

 of the year. The adult geese Ave distinguish by the spur on the Aving-point of 

 the ganders and generally by their larger size and heavier build. Their under- 

 sides, moreover, are more or less spotted or barred Avith black — some Avear 

 regular "barred Avaistcoats," Avhei-eas the young birds are AvhoUy plain Avhite 

 beneath. The legs and feet of the latter are also of the palest flesh-colour 

 (some almost Avhite), rarely shoAving any approximation to a piidv shade, and 

 their beaks vary from nearly Avhite to palest j-ellow ; Avhereas in the oldei", 

 mostly "spot-breasted," geese the beak is deep yelloAv to orange, and their 

 legs and feet are distinctly pink — some as pronouncedly so as in A. hmchii- 



1 We find a note that one Bean-Goose Avas shot on November 27, 1896— weight 5j lbs. 

 - See the elaborate monograph on The Geese of Euroi>e and Asia, by JI. Serge Alphoraky 

 of St. Petersburg (Loudon, RoAvland Ward). 



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