4364 Tue ZooLocist—Marcu, 1875. 
graceful attitudes. These pretty lively finches seem models of 
connubial attachment—I always find them in pairs, and when one 
flies forward the other follows. Like the bullfinches they probably 
remain paired for life. 
Wood Pigeon.—Enormous flocks frequented the turnip-fields in 
December: where they come from is a mystery, as they are 
certainly not natives of this district: many thousands have probably 
come to us from the north, or even from the Continent.* I have 
seen great patches in the turnip-fields resembling a blue-gray 
sheet spread on the land, from the number of these birds congre- 
gated, and throughout a small plantation, two or three acres in 
- extent, every tree-top thickly crowded with them. So far they 
have not attacked the bulbs, but confined their depredations 
entirely to the leaf. A few nights since I stood in an open place 
in a small wood of oak, where the wood pigeons are very fond of ~ 
roosting, and soon shot eighteen as they came in: their crops 
were so distended with fragments of turnip-leaf that the birds had 
a most unnatural and deformed appearance, resembling extreme 
examples of the variety of tame pigeons known as “ pouters.” 
From their supply of food being practically inexhaustible, they 
always kept their condition, suffering less than any other bird 
from the severity of the weather. 
Pinkfooted Goose.—In the last week in December I got a goose 
of this species out of thirteen feeding on the young clover plants 
in a field close to the embankment. I have seen and examined 
about half-a-dozen others shot in the neighbourhood, also two or 
three bean geese: our local gunners constantly confound the pink- — 
footed goose with the graylag—the latter now very rarely met with. 
It is the blue-gray shoulders and rump common to both which 
leads to the confusion. The pinkfooted goose is the most brightly 
coloured of any of the geese: it is a lively, active, cleanly-shaped 
bird, and more easily approachable—hence more frequently shot. 
The bean goose may very readily be distinguished from it at some 
distance by its almost uniform dull-brown colour; and at once, 
when in hand, by its long black bill, broken across the middle with 
orange-red: the colours of the beak are never so regularly disposed 
as in the pinkfooted: both these geese vary considerably in the 
length of their bill; and I am sometimes inclined to suppose there 
may be a race or variety between the two. I remember many years 
* See my previous notes in the ‘ Zoologist’ for January, 1875 (S, S, 4295). 
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