204 BRENT GOOSE. 



or about the time of their first appearance on our eastern coast, Massachusetts 

 for example, are tender, juicy, and fat; and are as well known to the epicures 

 of Boston as the more celebrated Canvass-back is to those of Baltimore. 



Its flight resembles that of our other Geese, being in ordinary circum- 

 stances rather slow and sedate. As to its ciy, although I have often seen 

 hundreds of individuals at a time, I have not been able to tune my ears so as 

 to liken its cacklings to the sounds produced by "a pack of hounds in full 

 cry/' as alleged by Wilson. The Brent Goose is a shy bird, not easily 

 approached; it swims well, and when wounded can dive with great expert- 

 ness, as I have more than once witnessed. Its food consists of marine plants, 

 which I have often found in its gizzard, along with coarse gravel and 

 fragments of shells, which latter were so thick as to lead me to think that 

 the bird had not broken them for the purpose of getting at the animal. In 

 walking it moves with lighter and quicker steps than even the Bernacle 

 Goose, Jlnser leucopsis. It is very easily tamed, and when thus subjugated 

 eats any kind of grain, and crops the grass well with its head slightly inclined 

 to one side. It has been known to produce young in captivity. 



Of its manner of breeding I am ignorant; and all that has been stated on 

 the subject is, that it breeds in great numbers in northern latitudes, for 

 example, on the coasts and islands of Hudson's Bay and the Arctic Sea, and 

 that it lays white eggs. 



I have represented a pair which were shot in spring, when their migratory 

 movements are more regular than in autumn. 



"A few years ago," Mr. Thomas MacCulloch writes to me, "a Brent 

 Goose, slightly wounded in the tip of the wing, was brought us, but it 

 rejected sea-grass and every thing else which was offered it, and died in a 

 few days after it came into our possession. Shortly after we procured 

 another, which had been disabled in the same manner. Like the first it 

 rejected every thing but water, and would certainly soon have shared the 

 fate of its predecessor, had not my mother thrown a handful of unshelled 

 barley into the tub of water, in which it was accustomed to swim. The 

 grain was immediately devoured by the bird, with as much avidity as if it 

 had been its usual fare; and during the time it remained with us, it would 

 taste no other food. It having recovered the use of its wing, we usually 

 placed it at night, for greater security, in a room near the one in which the 

 man-servant slept. This arrangement, however, did not prove agreeable to 

 all the parties concerned. Though the Brent was perfectly silent, yet the 

 disposition for early rising which it evinced by pattering about the floor 

 sorely disturbed the Irishman's predilection for a lengthened nap. To 

 relieve himself from the annoyance, early one morning, when he thought 

 there was no danger of detection, he let the bird free. It, however, no 



