Geese 



actually slow and difficult. When migrating, they often trail 

 across the clouds like dots, so high do they go — sometimes a 

 thousand feet or more, it is said — as if they spurned the earth. 

 But as a matter of fact they spend a great part of their lives on 

 land; far more than any of the ducks. 



On reaching a point above the water when returning from 

 the feeding grounds, the long defile closes up into a mass. The 

 geese now break ranks, and each for itself goes wheeling about, 

 cackling constantly, as they sail on stiff, set wings; or, diving, 

 tumbling, turning somersaults downward, and catching them- 

 selves before they strike the water, form an orderly array again, 

 and fly silently, close along the surface quite a distance before 

 finally settling down upon it softly to rest. 



Such a performance must be gone through twice a day, once 

 after their breakfast, begun at daybreak, and again in the late 

 afternoon, on their return from their inland excursion, which may 

 be to stubble fields, or to low, wet, timbered country, or to bushy 

 prairie lands. Not only the farmer's cereals, but any sort of wild 

 grain and grasses, berries, and leaf buds of bushes, these hearty 

 vegetarians nip off with relish. When we see them on shallow 

 waters, with tail pointing skyward and head and neck immersed, 

 they are probing the bottom for roots of water plants, particularly 

 for a sort of eel-grass that they fatten on, or for gravel, and are not 

 eating mollusks or any sort of animal food, as is sometimes said. 



But fatal consequences await on ducks and geese alike that 

 do not know enough to toughen their flesh and make it rank by a 

 fish diet. White-fronted geese, delicious game birds of the first 

 order, were once abundant during the migrations in the Chesa- 

 peake country, where they freely associated with the snow goose 

 and the Canada species, just as they do in the far west to-day ; 

 but the sportsman must now travel to the Great Lakes or the 

 plains, or, better still, to California, their favorite winter resort, 

 if he would see a good sized flight above the stubble fields, in 

 which, hidden in a hole, and with flat decoys standing all about 

 him, he waits, cramped and breathless, for the cackling flock to 

 come within range. 



The stupidity of this bird is more proverbial than real. If 

 any one doubts this, let him try to stalk one when it is feeding in 

 the fields, or listen to the tales of woe the California farmers tell 

 of its provoking vigilance and cleverness. 



135 



