Tas PIUK-FOOTED GOOSE, 
Anser Pere Baillon. 
——S 
Vernacular Names.—[ ? ] 
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THE Pink-footed Goose is so extremely rare in this 
ei country that it can at present only be accounted a 
rare winter straggler to the northern portions of 
Continental India. 
Blyth mentions having seen a picture, undoubtedly 
of this species, taken from a specimen obtained in 
the Punjab. Colonel Irby records having seen a speci- 
men of this species, which had been killed at the Alumbdagh, 
(near Lucknow,) in January 1858. In January 1864 I saw a pair 
of this species on a sandbank in the Jumna, in the midst of a 
huge flock of Grey Lags, amongst which, as I looked down on 
them from a cliff above, they were conspicuous by their smaller 
size, clove-brown colour (that is what they looked at a distance) 
and very pink feet. I went across the river, and after much 
trouble succeeded in shooting the pair, which proved to be the 
Pink-footed Goose, with whichI had been familiar at home. 
Colonel Graham assures me that this species is not uncommon 
on the Brahmaputra in Assam. 
We have no other record of its occurrence in India. 
Elsewhere its range is extremely ill-defined, it having been 
long confused with other species. It is a pretty abundant 
visitant to the British Isles, breeds in Iceland and Spitzbergen,* 
and occurs throughout Northern Europe. It probably extends 
to Central Europe and Northern Asia, but no reliable infor- 
mation exists on this subject ; all we do know for certain is, that 
it occurs in Japan. 
THE HABITS of this species donot differ, so far as we know, 
from those of the Grey Lag Geese. No one has observed them in 
this country, nor do I find anything worthy of notice 
recorded of them by European writers, except that their voice 
ec In Spitzbergen the Pink-footed Goose has been met with in Wide Bays, 
Latitude 79°35” north, and it probably occurs all along the West Coast. It is 
most numerous in Ice Sound.’’—Wew/on, 
