Geese 



their large bodies appear like two lines of dark dots describing 

 the letter V. In spite of their height, which never seems as great 

 as it actually is because of the goose's large size, one can distinctly 

 hear the honk of the temporary captain — some heavy veteran — 

 answered in clearer, deeper tones, as the birds pass above, by the 

 rear guardsmen in the long array that moves with impressive uni- 

 son across the clouds. Often the fanning of their wings is distinctly 

 audible too. The migration of all birds can but excite wonder 

 and stir the imagination ; but that of the wild goose embarked on 

 a pilgrimage of several thousand miles, made often at night, but 

 chiefly by broad daylight, attracts perhaps the most attention. 

 Sometimes the two diverging lines come together into one, and 

 a serpent seems to crawl with snake-like undulations across the 

 sky; or, again, the flock in Indian file shoots straight as an arrow. 

 It is as a bird ,of passage that one thinks of the goose, however 

 well one knows that it remains resident in many places at least 

 a part of the winter. 



A slow drift down a slope of a mile or more, on almost 

 motionless wings, brings them to the surface with majestic grace, 

 and flying low until the precise spot is reached where they wish 

 to rest, they settle on the water with a heavy splash. Usually 

 they stop flying near sunset to feed on the eel-grass, sedges, roots 

 of aquatic plants, insects, and occasionally on small fish, or on the 

 wheat, corn, and other grain that has dropped among the stubble 

 in the farmer's fields, and the berries, grass, and leaf buds they 

 find in swamps and bushy pastures. Quantities of gravel are 

 swallowed with their food. After a good supper they return to 

 the water, preferably to a good-sized lake, to sleep, and there they 

 float about with head tucked under wing until daybreak, when 

 another flight must be made inland to secure a breakfast. These 

 two regular daily flights are characteristic of all the geese. 



Such punctuality at meals is confidently reckoned upon by 

 the sportsman, who is thereby saved unnecessary waiting as he 

 crouches, cramped and cold, in a pit among the stubble and con- 

 cealed by a blind. These holes are about thirty inches in diam- 

 eter and about forty inches in depth. There are no birds with 

 keener, more suspicious eyes ; no sentinel of a flock more on the 

 alert, unless it be the sandhill crane, that often feeds with them 

 and is their ally ; no game birds more wary when the sports- 

 man tries to stalk them than these ; and so no one can possibly 



138 



