APPENDIX. 
449 
glass, and could distinguish the red colour of the beak and feet. They 
never associated with the other geese, but invariably were four or five 
hundred yards from them when on the same bog, and often were to be 
found on another bog miles from them.* The bean goose is in great 
numbers, but the most numerous is the white-fronted, in the propor- 
tion, I should think, of about fifty white-fronted to ten bean geese : 
they arrive at Michaelmas, in small parties, which join together after 
their arrival; the bean and white-fronted remain together, but not 
mixed , and when alarmed each species flies in a separate flock. During 
the severity of winter they remain on the bogs in the day-time, but 
often pass from one to the other, and at night come to feed in the 
turloghs, or winter lakes, arriving at a much later hour than the 
ducks. When spring has replaced winter, they spend more of their 
time in low bottoms than in the bogs, but always fly to the latter on 
being disturbed, and about three or four in the afternoon resort to some 
small lake, where they remain in the middle till towards midnight, 
sometimes till just before daybreak, when they come to the shores to 
feed on the coarse grass, or rather on the roots of the grass. They take 
their departure at the end of April, a few remaining till the beginning 
of May, or, as the country-people say, ‘ they never go till they have 
had three Jills of the green corn/ They congregate from all parts to 
the small lakes (in particular, one called Kill) for some short time be- 
fore they go off, and all take their departure in one or two enormous 
flocks, steering north-east. At Michaelmas, when the geese first come, 
they are very easily shot. Large numbers of bernacle and brent geese 
also pay a short visit at that time, in fact, on their way to the east side 
of Ireland, and again in the end of April, for a fortnight, after their 
departure from this side of the country. The country-people call the 
brent geese American geese, — why, I cannot tell. They shoot great 
numbers of bean and white-fronted geese, and salt them. On Easter 
Monday, the whole male population turn out to shoot geese and hunt 
for wild ducks’ eggs. Some of the white-fronted geese which I shot 
in the end of March had just got the full black bars on the breast ; 
the boys say they have sometimes found their eggs in the bogs be- 
fore they go away, but that none ever remain to breed. Two, which 
I had wounded and could not get, remained on the lake of Kill for a 
* In January, this year, a grey lag goose was sent to me from the neighbourhood 
of Dundalk, and I saw another, from Meath, in the Dublin market. 
2 H 
VOL. III. 
