204 
BRENT GOOSE. 
or about the time of their first appearance on our eastern coast, Massachusetts 
for example, are tender, juicy, and fat ; and are as well known to the epicures 
of Boston as the more celebrated Cany ass-back is to those of Baltimore. 
Its flight resembles that of our other Geese, being in ordinary circum- 
stances rather slow and sedate. As to its cry, although I have often seen 
hundreds of individuals at a time, I have not been able to tune my ears so as 
to liken its cacklings to the sounds produced by “ a pack of hounds in full 
cry,” as alleged by Wilson. The Brent Goose is a shy bird, not easily 
approached ; it swims well, and when wounded can dive with great expert- 
ness, as I have more than once witnessed. Its food consists of marine plants, 
which I have often found in its gizzard, along with coarse gravel and 
fragments of shells, which latter were so thick as to lead me to think that 
the bird had not broken them for the purpose of getting at the animal. In 
walking it moves with lighter and quicker steps than even the Bernacle 
Goose, Anser leucopsis. It is very easily tamed, and when thus subjugated 
eats any kind of grain, and crops the grass well with its head slightly inclined 
to one side. It has been known to produce young in captivity. 
Of its manner of breeding I am ignorant ; and all that has been stated on 
the subject is, that it breeds in great numbers in northern latitudes, for 
example, on the coasts and islands of Hudson’s Bay and the Arctic Sea, and 
that it lays white eggs. 
I have represented a pair which were shot in spring, when their migratory 
movements are more regular than in autumn. 
“ A few years ago,” Mr. Thomas MacCulloch writes to me, “ a Brent 
Goose, slightly wounded in the tip of the wing, was brought us, but it 
rejected sea-grass and every thing else which was offered it, and died in a 
fetf days after it came into our possession. Shortly after we procured 
another which had been disabled in the same manner. Like the first it 
rejected every thing but water, and would certainly soon have shared the 
fate of its predecessor, had not my mother thrown a handful of unshelled 
barley into the tub of water, in which it was accustomed to swim. The 
grain was immediately devoured by the bird, with as much avidity as if it 
had been its usual fare ; and during the time it remained with us, it would 
taste no other food. It having recovered the use of its wing, we usually 
placed it at night, for greater security, in a room near the one in which the 
man-servant slept. This arrangement, however, did not prove agreeable to 
all the parties concerned. Though the Brent was perfectly silent, yet the 
disposition for early rising which it evinced by pattering about the floor 
sorely disturbed the Irishman’s predilection for a lengthened nap. To 
relieve himself from the annoyance, early one morning, when he thought 
there was no danger of detection, he let the bird free. It, however, no 
