330 THE GAME BIRDS AND WILD EOWL 



Family ANATIDiE. Genus Beanta. 



Subfamily Anserine. 



BRENT GOOSE. 



BEANTA BBENICLA— (Lwm.) 

 Plate XXXII. 



Anas bernicia, a, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 198 (1766). 



Anser brenta, Pallas, Zoogr. Eosso-As. ii. p. 229 (1811) ; Seebohm, Hist. Brit. B. iii. 

 p. 508 (1885) ; Seebohm. Col. Eig. Eggs Brit. B. p. 33, pi. 10 (1896). 



Bernicia brenta (Pall.), Macgill. Brit. B. iv. p. 629, (1852) ; Dresser, B. Bur vi. p. 389, 

 pi. 415, fig. 2 (1877) ; Yarrell, Brit. B. ed. 4, iv. p. 290 (1885) ; Lilford, Col. Kg. 

 Brit. B. pt. xxiv. (1893); Dixon, Nests and Eggs Non-indig. Brit. B. p. 154 (1894). 



Branta bernicia (Linn.), Salvadori, Cat. B. Brit. Mus. xxvii. p. 119 (1895) ; Sharpe, 

 Handb. B. Gt. Brit. ii. p. 239 (1896). 



Geographical distribution.— Sri^tsA.- The Brent Goose is a common 

 winter visitor to the British Islands, perhaps 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 v^^estern shores of Scotland. In Ireland it is 

 equally abundant and widely distributed. Foreign ; North-west Palsearctic 

 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, possibly to the Taimur Peninsula. It was not found by Mr. Popham 

 in the valley of the Yenisei south of lat. 72° N., where young in down were 

 obtained. 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 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. — Branta 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. It 

 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" 



