130 



THE OOLOGIST 



A First Record of the Nesting of the 

 Blue Goose in Confinement 



The Blue Goose, Chen Caerulescens, 

 was first described by Linnaeus in his 

 system of Nature in 1758 from a speci- 

 man from Hudson Bay. The bird was 

 first supposed to be an immature Snow 

 Goose in process of moult, which it 

 was assumed began at the head and 

 proceeded backward down the neck 

 and spread gradually over the body of 

 the bird, slowly replacing the slaty 

 blue feathers with those of snowy 

 white except the wing primaries which 

 the learned bird doctors thought came 

 in black, thus completing the new and 

 proper plumage of a true adult chen 

 h. nivalis or Greater Snow Goose. 

 Thus was the Blue Goose of Linnaeus 

 relegated to innocus disuated and it re- 

 mained an unknown or unrecognized 

 scientific species for many years. 



Later a greater scientist that even 

 the great Linnaeus, the American In- 

 dian resurrected the long lost species 

 as a scientific reality, by pointing out 

 to the residents of the Hudson Bay 

 post that in the fall when the migra- 

 tion of the goose came, the white 

 wavy, as the Lesser Snow Goose was 

 called then, always came from the 

 North and Northwest and down the 

 west coast of Hudson Bay; while the 

 Blue Goose "him never come with the 

 Wavy, him always come over the big 

 water from northeast." This obvious 

 observation being noised about some 

 of the wiseacres of the birds com- 

 menced further investigation, and true 

 enough it was then learned that the 

 vast hoards of Wavy's that came 

 down the west coast of the Bay in the 

 fall never had a blue white headed 

 bird with them and that no Snow 

 Goose or Wavy ever came with the 

 great troops of blue white headed 

 birds from the North East "across the 

 big water." Further investigation 

 proved the very obvious fact to those 



acquainted with the two birds in life 

 that Linnaeus was right in according 

 to the Blue Goose, the rank of a full 

 species, and so we have in the A. O. U. 

 1910 list No. 169.1 Blue Goose, with 

 its range given as "Eastern North 

 America and Breeding range un- 

 known, but probably in the interior of 

 Northern Ungova," though the 1886 

 list states that "it breeds on eastern 

 shores of Hudson Bay." 



The truth is that about as little is 

 known of the habits of this splendid 

 bird as about any of the American 

 Geese, though its summer home is sup- 

 posed to be not so very far from the 

 most thickly settled eastern part of 

 our country, and the homes of most 

 of our big bird doctors. Its winter 

 home is known to be the coast of the 

 Gulf of Mexico, near the mouth of the 

 Mississippi. 



It has been the privilege of the 

 writer to have had on my home place 

 at Lacon, 111., during the past six or 

 seven years about a dozen specimens 

 of this interesting bird, a pair of which 

 are now in the Bronx Gardens at New 

 York City. All of these birds were 

 wild birds mostly trapped though one 

 was a very slightly winged tipped 

 bird, specimen that lit in the poultry 

 pen of a miner near Lacon, and 

 another one of these wild birds that 

 lit in our grounds during spring mi- 

 gration and staid while the other two 

 went on. 



Careful and constant study of these 

 birds discloses much that is of inter- 

 est. First of all they are, the writer 

 thinks as docile and easily domesti- 

 cated as any of the geese, and have a 

 far better disposition than most of 

 them. We have had them as tame as 

 Banta chickens, hanging about the 

 doors, calling to those in the house 

 for food, and eating it from the hand 

 when it came. Yet the Blue Goose 

 when its nest is approached is a vali- 



