68 Geese of Europe and Asia 



flocks, and visit spots where the ice never completely disappears, and although then quite 

 incapable of flight, are so wary that they easily escape from pursuit by running. 



The eggs collected in Finmark by Messrs. Wolley, Wheelwright, and Meves, and pre- 

 served in the British Museum, are 68.5-83 mm. ( = 2.70-3.27 in.) long, with a diameter of 

 45.7-49 mm. (= 1. 80-1. 93 in.). The clutch is sometimes four, but also five and six (Collett). 

 It must not, however, be supposed that this is the limit. The colouring of the eggs is light 

 yellowish, and the shell is smooth and rather glossy. On the eggs of one of the above- 

 mentioned clutches in the British Museum, it is recorded that they were gathered in June; 

 and on the Boganida a young bird in down was taken by Middendorff as early as June 23, 

 and on July 29 another was captured, in which the primary and secondary wing-feathers 

 and scapulars had only just begun to show. 



During great migrations these geese usually form in file in the shape of an oblique 

 or sloping line, but at times in a wedge, like other geese. On short journeys, 

 and when flying out to feed and home again to their night's lodging, lesser white- 

 fronted geese mostly fly in a disorderly compact crowd, uttering the while their cackle, 

 which is less loud than that of the larger bird. I often saw them flying with the latter 

 both to water and to the steppe to graze, but I never noticed the flocks mixing. 

 Many times I saw them together on the river Mius, in the Armenian steppes between the 

 river Sambek and the Don mouths, and I shall never forget their innumerable flocks 

 covering, in late autumn, the sand-flats of the Mius estuary, and then flying to feed, partly 

 to the neighbouring corn-fields, partly to the high grass of the steppe. 



I could never even approximately count the number of separate flocks appearing in 

 autumn, in such continuous streams did they pass, one after another, whichever way I 

 looked, filling the air with such loud cries that, even now, after many years, the ring of 

 them still haunts my ears. 



Both species alighted together on the fields, covering wide spaces of green corn, 

 stubble, meadow, or high grass with an unbroken dusky mass. I remember how one year 

 on an estate near Taganrog these flocks caused considerable damage to the corn, tearing 

 up young shoots of winter crops (the autumn was rainy and the black earth very sodden), 

 so that it was actually necessary to send three horsemen to protect the crops and drive off 

 the countless masses of unbidden guests. I spent much time striving to stalk these birds, 

 but almost always in vain ; and only from the cover of specially dug pits, whither I betook 

 myself before dawn, did I succeed in bringing down a few of these wary geese. To-day, 

 recalling the past, I think with regret what success would have attended my efforts had I 

 had recourse to the American method of shooting these birds, namely, by setting up 

 dummies as a decoy near the ambush, especially iron profiles, so easily made by any one. 

 But I then knew nothing of this method, and, to tell the truth, I should hardly have found 

 time for it, as, simultaneously with the passage of these geese, were flights of woodcock, 

 snipe, and jack-snipe, in the pursuit of which I was then wholly absorbed. 



If, however, as stated in the section on the larger species, the lesser white-fronted 

 goose traverses the Azov district in such vast flights in autumn, on the other hand it is 

 hardly to be seen in spring. Either, on the way to its breeding-grounds, it flies very 

 high and does not alight at all, or it takes another route, as the number sometimes 

 seen during the spring migration is perfectly insignificant compared with the huge 

 autumn hosts. 



In view of the extreme interest attaching to the observations made by Zhitnikov 



