The Pink-Footed Bean Goose. 69 



to the naturalist, John Ray, and is described, at that distant period, as the common 

 wild Goose of Yorkshire, in his " Synopsis Methodica Avium," page 138, written 

 in Latin, and completed in 1694, but not published till 1713.* 



Mr. Arthur Strickland, in his paper on " British Geese," published in 1858, 

 appears not to have been aware of Ray's statement, although he describes the 

 Short-billed Goose as the species which visited the Humber and the Yorkshire 

 Wolds, confounding it, however, with the young of A. segefum. Finally, in 1887, 

 Mr. F. Boyes, of Beverley, in a letter to "The Field" newspaper, pointed out 

 that the Pink-footed was the common Goose of the Yorkshire Wolds, a fact now 

 fully accepted by all local ornithologists. 



The habits of the Pink-footed Goose so closely resemble those of the Bean 

 Goose, that much which has been written of the one will hold good of the other. 

 They arrive in the Humber district the last week in September, and early in 

 October; the earliest dates in my note-book are — September 26th, October 3rd, 

 October 5th, (twice), October loth. Mr. Haigh has known them appear as early 

 as August 26th, in 1893, in excessively hot weather. During the day they haunt 

 the stubbles and clover fields on the wolds and open districts, rising about the 

 same hour in the evening, and wending their way, in the long extended order, to 

 the islands and sand-banks in the Humber, to return as punctually to their feeding 

 grounds at the break of day. They are the wildest and most unapproachable of 

 all the Geese. 



Within the recollection of certainly three generations, and probably since the 

 enclosure of the wolds, if not before, flocks of wild Geese, coming up from the 

 coast, have been in the habit of passing over the town of Louth, in the early 

 morning, on their way to their feeding grounds on the high wolds. The large 

 barley walks are the places which are most frequented not so much, as I have 

 found by an examination of the stomach, for scattered grain, as young white 

 clover and trefoil plants, of which they are immoderately fond. Considering the 

 persistency with which Geese, day by day, resort to, the same locality, it is sur- 

 prising so few are shot. The fields on the wolds are very extensive, and Geese 

 keep near the centre; on coming in from the coast they fly high, and it is only 

 in stormy weather that their flight is low enough for a shot from a heavy gun 

 to do execution, fired from the vantage ground of a solitary bam, shed, or stack, 

 on a hill top, where at the same time the shooter remains concealed till the skein 

 of Geese are well above him. 



In recent years there has been a great decrease in the numbers which frequent 



* The coloured figure of the Bean Goose in Ivewin's " Birds of Great Britain," 1800, Vol. VII, plate 240, 

 is, I think, probably taken from a bird of this species. 



V01-. IV. M 



