Letters on ornithology. 65 



or absence of young remains the same all through the winter. 

 Young ones alone, so far as I can find out, never come to us without 

 old ones among them. If young ones came alone, they would 

 sometimes be tame ; but on their first appearance they are always 

 very wild, commonly even wilder than they are in March, so that 

 they are rarely shot when they first come : when any are shot 

 there are always some old ones among them (when not all old). 

 Although my observation and information is chiefly in one place, 

 yet the birds change a good deal ; from 100 to 300 or more 

 come in October, and we have fresh arrivals at various times in 

 the winter from the North,— and after severe weather breaks up 

 great numbers more come, probably from the South, — yet the 

 abundance or scarcity of young ones remains the same as when 

 they first appear, and prevails alike, or nearly so, in the black- and 

 white-bellied races. 



The mildness or coldness of the winter has nothing whatever 

 to do with the presence or absence of young Brent Geese. I 

 have kept no record, but remember that throughout some of the 

 most severe winters I have known the young ones have abounded 

 — for instance 1855-56 and 1870-71. On the other hand, in some 

 of the mildest winters there has been a nearly complete absence 

 of young Brent Geese ; and when they are nearly all old ones, 

 and the weather mild, of course very few are shot. One very 

 mild winter (I forget the date, within the last ten years I think) 

 I shot sixteen ; one was a young one — I only heard of three or 

 four young being got on our coast. Mr. J. Wiseman was shooting 

 in Holland that winter ; he got 500 or 600 Black Geese ; only 

 one was a young one. I feel confident that, had we any means 

 of finding out, when the young fail to appear here they are also 

 absent in all places frequented by these birds in Western Europe, 

 and doubtless the same will be the case on the eastern coast of 

 North America. I hear from Mr. Sharpe that all the Brent 

 Geese sent by Capt. Feilden to the British Museum, from Grin- 

 nell Land, are white-bellied. 



The most complete absence of young Brents was in a season 

 when many old ones were killed (about 1846, '47, or '48) ; 

 weather mild, except a week of sharp frost (in January I think). 

 One man shot thirty dozen Brent Geese in that week ; he did 

 not see a young one all the season. I only heard of one being 

 shot by anyone on the Essex coast that winter. Many old ones 



