128 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



29, 1889, and another was noted by Dr. Charles W. Townsend in the Brighton 

 Marshes opposite the Cambridge Hospital on April 20, 1890. Mr. W. A. 

 Jeffries reports seeing two birds in the Back Bay Basin a few years ago, and 

 five alighted together in Spy Pond as recently as December, 1901, according to 

 Mr. John H. Hardy, Jr. 



Dr. Townsend asserts on the authority of Dr. Phillips "that it is only in or 

 after stormy weather that Wild Geese fly in to Wenham Lake and alight." 1 

 I have seen the birds swimming in Fresh Pond, and in Concord River, much 

 oftener when the weather was clear or, at least, fair than during or just after 

 storms. I remember, however, a tradition current among our local gunners of 

 forty years ago, to the effect that not long before that period a large flock of 

 Geese had alighted, during a snowstorm, on Strawberry Hill near the southern 

 shores of Fresh Pond. These birds, it was said, had become so exhausted and 

 so loaded with damp snow that numbers of them were killed with clubs. 



A record of the breeding of this species within our limits is given in 

 the 'Ornithologist and Oologist,'^ in the following words : "A set of two eggs 

 of the Canada Goose was taken about the last of April at Lexington, Mass. 

 The geese were noticed flying every morning at break of day, regularly, to a 

 certain locality, which attracted attention. Upon investigation the goose was 

 discovered on a nest, which was a hollow, at the foot of a large pine, about four 

 feet from the water, and about five rods from an ice-house, on the land of Henry 

 Simonds. The finder placed the eggs under a hen, but they failed to hatch. 

 The geese disappeared after the nest was disturbed." I have been unable to 

 verify these statements, and since they are not accompanied either by the name 

 of their author, or by that of the alleged finder of the nest, they cannot be 

 accepted with much confidence. 



A striking and probably not exaggerated account of the numbers in which 

 Canada Geese occurred near Boston in early Colonial days is given by Morton 

 who says : "I have had often 1000. before the mouth of my gunne," adding, 

 " the fethers of the Geefe that I have killed in a fhort time, have paid for all 

 the powther and f hott, I have fpent in a yeare, and I have fed my doggs with as 

 fatt Geefe there, as I have euer fed upon my felfe in England." ^ All this hap- 

 pened, no doubt, between 1625 and 1630, at Merrymount, now WoUaston, only 

 a few miles south of the Cambridge Region. 



Wood — evidently referring to his experience in the neighborhood of 



1 C. W. Townsend, Memoirs of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, no. III. Birds of Essex County, 

 Massachusetts, 1905, 149. 



2 [Editor,] Ornithologist and Oologist, XIV, 1889, 14. 



^Thomas Morton, New English Canaan, 1637, 67, 68. Ed. C. F. Adams, Jr., 1883, 190. 



