LETTERS ON ORNITHOLOGY. 6? 



greedy and careless, would not leave their feeding. These birds 

 always seem hungrier in cold than in mild weather ; easterly 

 wind, too, if long continued, makes them eager to be in shore, 

 as it prevents weed from drifting off to sea, so that they get 

 nothing to eat without coming ashore for it. They pull up the 

 weed when ashore, and eat by preference the roots or white part 

 below the surface, leaving the green blade by cart-loads ; with 

 westerly wind this drives off to sea with the next ebb-tide, and 

 furnishes them with plenty of food, day and night, far from land. 

 In severe frost much thin ice forms on the mud, floats with the 

 tide pulling-up weed, and gets packed into thick lumps, holding 

 much weed. When the ice drifts off to sea the geese follow it, 

 and we see hardly any for some days, when they come back again 

 as thick as ever, probably having eaten all the weed as it thawed 

 out of the ice. 



In the way already described, in frosty weather and easterly 

 wind, the companies of geese get much broken up, the birds 

 probably being re-arranged in fresh combinations ; and we then 

 find some flocks nearly all old ones, and others mostly young 

 ones. When there has been no hard weather it is a pretty sight, 

 if you are outside the middle of a large lot coming off the mud, 

 to see the great congregation coming and gradually spreading, 

 the air being full of the various strings for perhaps more than 

 half a mile wide, and as deep. 



In the winter 1880-81, as I think I told you, we had not 

 many White-bellied Geese ; I had some difficulty in getting a 

 good specimen for you and another for Capt. Feilden. There 

 were very few young among them, but I think a larger proportion 

 than among the black sort. Last winter we had hardly any 

 white-bellied ones at all. I heard of one being shot among some 

 black ones quite early in October, the only one I heard of being 

 got. My man saw one among a flock of black soon after ; and 

 I saw only one white-bellied, a single bird, early in November or 

 late in October, I forget which. One gunner, always on the 

 coast, said he had seen only one little lot of the white-bellied 

 sort, about a dozen, all the winter. 



I am anxious to see what Stevenson says about the races of 

 Brent Geese, but have not yet heard that his third volume is 

 out. I saw a specimen in the British Museum, labelled 

 " nigricans " — I think from Western N. America : it was high up 



