The Blue Goose 



No. 372 



Blue Goose 



A. O. U. No. 169. i. Chen caerulescens (Linnaeus). 



Description (of four winter specimens in the collection of the Museum of Ver- 

 tebrate Zoology). — Head and neck all around white, strongly tipped, especially ante- 

 riorly, with ochraceous-orange; general bod)' plumage sooty gray, or mingled dusky 

 and glaucous-gray, with paler, brownish, edgings, color darkest on lower neck all around; 

 lower abdomen, flanks, and lower tail-coverts sordid white, more or less tinged with 

 gray centrally; rump and upper tail-coverts (nearly concealing tail) light bluish gray; 

 wings glaucous-gray, purest on coverts, blackening on tips of flight-feathers; tertials 

 and secondary coverts blackish, centrally, with whitish edgings; tail bluish dusky, 

 tipped with white. Ochraceous-orange of head and neck probably not found in 

 breeding plumage. Length 812.8-S89 (32.00-35.00); wing 431.8-457.2 (17.00-18.00); 

 tail 140 (5.51); bill 58 (2.28); depth at base 34 (1.34); tarsus 82 (3.23). 



Recognition Marks. — Head and neck all around, in contrast with dark body 

 plumage, distinctive. Somewhat larger than Emperor Goose (Philacte canagica), 

 and plumage not conspicuously scaled. 



Nesting. — Does not breed in California. An egg, laid in captivity (now in 

 M. C. O. coll.) is dull grayish white, and measures 72.64 x 50.04 (2.86 x 1.97). 



General Range. — Eastern North America. Breeds on Baffin Island and prob- 

 ably in northern Ungava, and winters south to Louisiana and Texas. Has occurred 

 during migrations in Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas, and in winter in California. 



Occurrence in California. — "Rare winter visitant to the Sacramento-San 

 Joaquin Valley" (Grinnell). Two published records: that of two immature birds 

 killed near Stockton about Feb. 1, 1892 (Belding); and one taken at Gridley, Butte 

 County, Dec. 15, 1910 (reported by Grinnell). 



Authorities. — Belding, Zoe, vol. iii., 1892, p. 97 (Stockton); Cooke, U. S. Dept. 

 Agric, Biol. Surv. Bull., no. 26, 1906, p. 68 (distr. and migr.) ; Grinnell, Condor, vol. 

 vol. xxii., 1920, p. 76 (Gridley, Butte Co., one spec; history of occurrence). 



IT SEEMS to be almost literally true that all good geese come to 

 California. We will not press the point to its remotest implications, but 

 it is matter for congratulation that this voyageur from northeastern 

 Arctic America has recently signed California's goose register in ipso 

 sanguine. Thirty years ago Lyman Belding, of Stockton, secured two 

 birds whose heads Ridgway identified as belonging to immature Blue 

 Geese, and Belding himself saw others in the succeeding years. It was 

 only in 1910, however, that a specimen was preserved and mounted, and 

 brought (in 1920) to scientific notice. For all we know, the bird may have 

 been of fairly regular occurrence in the "good old days." 



For more than a century and a half the Blue Goose has been a will 

 o' the wisp, a bird of mystery alike to sportsmen and scientists. The 

 Creoles of Louisiana had been contentedly picking his bones all this while, 



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