132 Bird -Lore 



fowl. Near the seashore, the eggs were frequently laid among the bleached 

 and 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 Esquimo and I passed within a few 

 feet on each side of her; but, in scanning the ground for nesting birds, the gen- 

 eral similarity in tint of the bird and the obvious stick of driftwood had com- 

 pletely misled our sweeping glances. We had gone some twenty steps beyond 

 when the sitting bird 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. They were lying 

 in a slight depression without a trace of lining. The same ruse misled us 

 a number of times; but on each occasion the parent betrayed her presence 

 by a startled outcry and hasty departure soon after we had passed her and 

 our backs were presented. They usually flew to a considerable distance, and 

 showed little anxiety over our visit to the nests. The nests I examined usually 

 contained from three to five eggs, but the full complement ranged up to eight. 

 When first laid, the eggs are pure white, but soon become soiled. They vary 

 in shape from elongated oval to slightly pyriform, and are indistinguishable 

 in size and shape from those of the White-fronted Goose. As the complement 

 approaches completion, the parent lines the depression in the ground with a 

 soft, warm bed of fine grass, leaves, and feathers from her own breast. The 

 males were rarely seen near the nests, but usually gathered about the feeding- 

 grounds with others of their kind, where they were joined now and then by 

 their mates. 



The young are hatched the last of June or early July, and are led about 

 the tundras by both parents until, the last of July and the first of August, 

 the old birds moult their quill feathers and with the still unfledged young 

 become extremely helpless. At this time, myriads of other Geese are in the 

 same condition, and the Esquimos made a practice of setting up long lines of 

 strong fish-nets on the tundras to form pound-traps, or enclosures with wide 

 wings leading to them, into which thousands were driven and killed for food. 

 The slaughter in this way was very great, for the young were killed at the 

 same time and thrown away in order to get them out of the way of the 

 next drive. The Esquimos of this region also gather large numbers of eggs of 

 the breeding waterfowl for food and, with the demand for them at the 

 mining camps of the North, a serious menance to the existence of these and 

 other waterfowl might ensue. 



Fortunately, in 1909, President Roosevelt made a bird-reservation cover- 

 ing the delta of the Yukon and the tundra to the southward, which includes 

 the main breeding-ground of the Emperor Goose, and thus took a long step 

 toward perpetuating this fine bird. 



