56 PLECTROPTERUS GAMBENSIS 



These birds become tame very quickly, and at times live to advanced age. In the 

 Cairo Gardens the length of life was only four years and ten months, but at Frank- 

 fort-on-the-Main, Schmidt (1878) gave the age to which they attain as from eight 

 years nine months to nine years nine months. The eighth edition of the "List of 

 Animals Living in London Gardens" (P. L. Sclater, 1883) records one specimen 

 twenty-six years old at that time, and others twenty-five years, sixteen years, etc. 



The market value of live specimens before the World War varied from $20.00 to 

 $50.00 the pair. 



Hybrids. In the Berlin Gardens hybrids were produced with the Muscovy Duck 

 (Cairina). These were all males. About half of them died during early em- 

 bryonic stages and many more in down stages, few living to maturity (Heinroth, 

 1911 ; Poll, 1906). This same cross was also made in the New York Zoological Gardens 

 in 1911, so Mr. Lee S. Crandall tells me, and there the young lived only a few days, 

 refusing to eat. 



Leverktihn (1890) records a cross between a male of this species and a female 

 Egyptian Goose (Alopochen cegyptiaca). 



GEOGRAPHICAL RACES 



BLACK SPUR-WINGED GOOSE 



PLECTROPTERUS GAMBENSIS NIGER Sclater 



Synonymy 



Plectropierus niger Sclater, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1877, p. 47, pi. 7. 

 Plectropterus gambensis niger Reichenow, Die Vbgel Afrikas, vol. 1, p. 136, 1900. 



Vernacular Names 

 English: French: German: 



Black Spur-winged Goose Plectroptere noir. Schwarze Sporengans. 



This geographical race inhabits southern and southeastern Africa and probably intergrades with the 

 true P. gambensis. In size it is the same as P. gambensis, but the frontal knob is not so prominent, and 

 there appear to be no bare spaces on the sides of the neck. There is said never to be any white on the 

 throat, and the white on the front of the body is much less extensive. P. L. Sclater (1860, p. 38) has 

 pointed out differences in the skeleton. 



Horsbrugh (1912) says that on the Orange River, South Africa, he saw large flocks of the Black 

 Spur-wing, among which were three or four birds answering to the description of P. gambensis, and 

 he does not consider that the theory that the increase in the white of the plumage is due to age, will 

 account for so few specimens of gambensis-like birds among these large flocks. In other words, he 

 considers P. niger a valid species, intergrading to the north with birds showing more and more white 

 on the throat and underpart. 



Gunning and Haagner (1910) state that some score of Spur-wings in a Transvaal zoological garden 

 represent all stages of plumage from P. gambensis gambensis to P. gambensis niger. They discard the 

 latter form entirely. 



