286 
SWIMMERS. 
summer. They make their appearance at first in flocks of 
twenty or thirty, which are readily decoyed within gunshot bj' 
the hunters, w'ho set up stales, or stuffed birds, and imitate their 
call. Two or three are so frequently killed at a shot, in this 
way, that the usual price of a Wild Goose is a single charge of 
ammunition. This vernal flight of the Geese continues from 
about the middle of April to the same time in May ^ their ap- 
pearance of course coinciding with the thawing of the swamps 
and marshes, though their usual food of grass and berries is 
accessible at most times when not buried up in the snow. 
'I'hese fruits are often, indeed, only mellowed by the frost, and 
when stripped of their wintry wreath are again ready for food, 
as they were in the autumn before their disappearance beneath 
the snow. At such times, according to Dr. Richardson, the 
Whld Goose makes an abundant repast of the farinaceous ber- 
ries of the silvery buckthorn as well as of other kinds which have 
escaped destruction. After feeding in a desultory manner for 
about three weeks, these birds retire from the shores of Hud- 
son Ray, their great rendezvous, and disperse in pairs through 
the country between the 50th and 67th parallels, to breed, but 
are seldom or never seen on the coasts of the Arctic Sea ; yet 
Mr. Audubon found them breeding on the shores of Labrador. 
They lay sLx or seven greenish-white eggs in a coarse nest 
usually made on the ground, but some pairs occasionally breed 
on the banks of the Saskatchewan, in trees, making use, on 
these occasions, of the deserted eyries of the Ravens or Fishing 
Hawks. The call, or iionk, is imitated by a prolonged nasal 
pronunciation of the syllable wook frequently repeated. 
Solitude and suitable food seem principally to influence the 
Canada Goose in the selection of its breeding-place ; it is there- 
fore not improbable but that many pairs pass the period of 
reproduction in the swampy and retired marshes of the Great 
Northwestern Lakes. At any rate, in the month of March 
(1810) many Wild Geese were nesting in the shave-rush bot- 
toms of the Missouri no farther up than Fire Prairie, consider- 
ably below the junction of the river Platte ; so that the breed- 
ing range of the Canada Goose probably extends through not 
