THE EMPEROR GOOSE 
By EDWARD W. NELSON 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 64 
Arctic 
Home 
Among all the wild geese which make their summer home in the far 
North — both in the Old and the New World — the Emperor Goose is one 
of the least known and most beautiful. Its snowy white head, dusky 
throat, satiny gray body, on which each feather is marked by a black 
crescent and white margin, and the brilliant orange feet, make a strik- 
ingly handsome combination of colors. When the males first arrive on 
their breeding-grounds in spring, the beauty of their plumage is remark- 
able, but much of its satiny luster goes with the advancing season. 
Although the breeding-range of the Emperor Goose covers parts of 
two continents, yet perhaps it is more restricted in its 
territory than any other species of northern goose. 
Its summer home lies along the coast on both sides 
of Bering Straits, but so far as we know the vast majority of them breed 
in Alaska, mainty on the islands of the lower part of the Yukon delta, 
and thence southward nearly to the mouth of the Kuskokwim River. 
Considerable numbers also breed on St. Lawrence Island, and on the 
coast of northeastern Asia, where they arrive as soon as the tundra is 
free from snow. Their main wintering place appears to be on the 
southern side of the Peninsula of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. 
The Aleuts know them as “Beach Geese,” owing to their persistent occu- 
pation of the seashore. Stray individuals wander down the American 
coast in winter even to northern California, and occasionally are driven 
by gales to Hawaii. 
When I was preparing to go to Alaska, some years ago, the Emperor 
Goose, Steller’s and Fischer’s Eiders, and the Aleutian Tern were names 
to conjure with, and the anticipation of studying these birds in their 
remote northern homes filled me with joy. In the North, my head- 
cjuarters were at St. Michael, on the coast of Bering Sea, about sixty 
miles north of the Yukon delta. Here Emperor Geese rarely occurred 
except stray parties — visitors to the marshy coast-plain in fall. I made 
a sledge- journey one winter through the Yukon delta and across the 
tundras southward to the Kuskokwim, and found the 
Eskimos in that area wearing “parkies,” or outer gar- ^'^tenal for 
ments, made of the skins of Emperor Geese sewed to- 
gether, and learned that great numbers of these birds nested there each 
spring rarely above the upper limit of the tide in the sluggish streams 
of this low plain. All available observations of the habits of this bird 
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