Family ANATID^. Genus Bernicla. 



Subfamily Anserine. 



BRENT GOOSE. 



BERNICLA BRENTA— ^mw«. 



Geographical Distribution. — British .■ Common winter 

 visitor to the British Islands. The most abundant species of 

 Goose upon our coasts during the cold season, universally 

 distributed, especially on the east and south, becoming rarer, 

 however, in the Orkneys and Shetlands, the Hebrides, and along 

 the entire western shores of Scotland. In Ireland it is equally 

 abundant and widely distributed. Foreign: North-west Palasarctic 

 region ; more southerly in winter. The typical form of the Brent 

 Goose breeds on Spitzbergen, Franz Josef Land, and Nova 

 Zembla, but how far to the east is unknown. It passes the 

 Faroes, the coasts of Scandinavia, and the shores of the Baltic on 

 migration, and winters on the coasts of Denmark, Holland, 

 Belgium, North Germany, and France. During the cold season 

 it occasionally visits the Mediterranean basin, the Black Sea, and 

 the Nile delta. It has recently been shot as far south as Mogador, 

 in Morocco, by Mr. A. C. Payton. Of the breeding of this 

 species in Iceland there is not a shred of positive evidence. 



Allied Forms. — Bemida brenta glaucogaster, an inhabitant 

 of the northern Nearctic region, breeding from the Arctic 

 Archipelago in the east to the west coast of Greenland in the 

 west, and as far north as land is known to exist. Winters on the 

 Atlantic coasts of North America as far south as Texas. The 

 American form of the Brent Goose, only subspecifically distinct, 

 a " British " species more or less intergrading with its Old 

 World ally, and dealt with fully in the following chapter. B. 

 nigricans, an inhabitant of Siberia as far east as the Lena, and 



