THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
tail-coverts meeting beyond. Birds of the year are distinguished by the 
wing -coverts being boldly tipped with grey, forming a series of light 
transverse bands. 
As regards the “ grey geese,” all the four British species are by nature 
of inland habit, feeding on tillage, clover, and meadowland. All appear 
instinctively to dislike salt water, and avoid it as far as possible. Were 
it not for the obvious dangers and frequent disturbance to which they 
are necessarily subject inland, I imagine that no grey goose would ever, 
of its own free will, alight on tidal waters. 
The few casual grey geese that are ever killed by British coast-gunners 
are chiefly of the pink-footed species, with bean geese in rather lesser 
numbers, and the white -fronted kind at irregular intervals. 
The Greylag goose (though commonly described as one of our winter 
wildfowl), I have never myself identified on British coasts during forty 
seasons’ fowling. Its winter haunts lie in more southerly latitudes, its 
occurrences here being strictly local, and limited to certain favoured 
spots, perhaps half a dozen in all.* 
When busy feeding on the ooze at low tide, both geese and wigeon 
habitually pull up by the roots far more of the sea -grass {zostera) than 
they are able to consume. At first, when hungry, they devour the whole 
plant ; but as appetites slacken, the fowl become more epicurean, 
confining their attention exclusively to the succulent white roots, and 
leaving the yard -long green blades untouched. On examining the spot 
where big packs have been feeding, thousands of these rejected blades 
will be found scattered in regular swathes on the mud. 
Whether the result arises from instinctive design oris merely accidental, 
at least the habit serves them a useful purpose. For such is the quantity 
of this — ^apparently — ^wasted grass, that on each ebb tide there is carried 
out to sea sufficient to enable the fowl, if need be, to remain ” outside ” 
for days together, subsisting entirely on this drift weed. Thus should 
they be unduly harassed and persecuted, the geese can elude pursuit by 
remaining at sea, where no punt can follow them; and so set at naught 
all the power and arts of their aggressors. In mild seasons, when geese 
* In matters of specific identification I venture to express the opinion that most old-time records possess little or no 
value — often rather the reverse — unless collateral evidence be available to substantiate their accuracy. Fine specific 
distinctions were not recognized, or suspected, a few generations back. Bird-names, moreover, were ambiguous and 
used indiscriminately. Thus herons were confused with cranes, shovelers with spoonbills; while all grey geese were 
(and still are very generally) known as “grey lags.” Few then distinguished one species from another — not everyone 
does so correctly to-day 1 Few, indeed, of the old-time records, were it possible to put them to a test, would prove 
trustworthy. 
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