BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. ra 
BRANTA CANADENSIS (L.). (172.) 
CANADA GOOSE. 
About the twentieth of March the Canada Geese come in 
large flocks, and at once possess the open, prairie lakes, and 
those embraced in extensive marshes. Their honkings at once 
enlist the interest of everybody who is waiting impatiently 
for the spring. The long, triangular flock will soon have 
everybody out of doors gazing at it wherever it passes. It is 
not much to be wondered at surely if those honkings are 
melody in more than one sense to the people of this latitude 
after a six-months bird silence, because of its announcements 
and its prophecy. Arriving uniformly in the first half of the 
day, we feel quite assured then that they have come to stay 
for a time at least, while those reaching us later, and during 
the night, pass directly on further north. Unlike most other 
wheat producing countries, Minnesota grows very little that is 
sown in the fall, and hence has little inducements: to offer 
these birds in this respect upon their arrival, but her 
meadows, and the products of what has just been planted in 
wheat, soon supply them abundantly, and they drift about 
hither and yonder till about the 25th to the 30th of April, 
when they disappear as if they had been spirited away as 
mysteriously as the swallows formerly disappeared upon the 
approach of winter. They have paired and entered upon their 
great mission cf nidification, a little removed from the ponds 
in the marshes, or on the ‘‘ high-and-dry” islands in the lakes 
and larger water courses. The nests are formed of such 
materials as are in the locality chosen, more frequently sticks, 
coarse weeds, and grass, and are lined with feathers. They 
lay from eight to ten eggs which are too well known to need 
description. Nests have been found with the full complement 
of eggs in them as early as May Ist, but it is generally later 
than that. The male shares the confinement of incubation, at 
least while the female seeks her accustomed food. Nothing 
can exceed the devotion of both parents not only until the 
young are fully grown, but until ‘‘ they are of age” the follow- 
ing spring. 
Their fondness for the succulent blades of the volunteer 
wheat, and the soft grains of the waste of the preceding crop, 
costs them their lives by thousands in the fall months, when 
they are shot from holes in the ground surrounded by artificial 
decoys. 
