THE ASH Y-H EADED GOOSE. 
Chloephaga poliocephala. 
Plate XLIX. 
This beautiful Goose was first introduced into England by the late Earl of Derby, who succeeded, with the 
assistance of Admiral Ilornby and other friends, in importing several specimens of it from the southern 
extremity of America, where it is said to be a common species. 
At the dissolution of the Knowsley Menagerie, in the autumn of 1851, the Zoological Society obtained by 
purchase a single pair of these birds, which had been imported by Lord Derby, in the previous year. This 
pair bred in the Society’s Gardens in the following spring, five young birds having been hatched out on the 
5th of May, 1853, and the same pair or their produce have continued to breed with more or less success every 
year since that period, in our establishment. 
Until the year 1857 this goose was commonly called the “Magellanic Goose,” and such was the name 
employed for it in the first issue of these illustrations, and in the temporary letter-press which accompanied 
them. The receipt, however, in the spring of that year, of specimens of the true Magellanic or “Upland” 
Goose, of the Falkland Islands, enabled me to correct this error, and to show that the proper title of this bird 
is the “Ashy-headed Goose” {Chloephagapoliocephala), as it was termed by Mr. G. E. Gray, in 1844* 
In the Magellanic Goose, of which the Society now possess several specimens, the sexes are coloured 
quite differently, the female being brown where the male is pure white, and the legs being yellow in the former 
and black in the latter. In the Ashy-headed Goose, on the contrary, there is no sexual difference exemplified 
in the plumage, but the young birds of the first year, as represented in the front figures of the accompanying- 
plate, do not acquire the fine full ruddy breast of the adults, which is well shown in two of the smaller figures 
in the background. 
Both the Ashy-headed and the Magellanic Geese, however, in spite of these differences, belong to the same 
group, which, differing slightly from the Barnacle or Bernacle Geese of Europe, has been separated from them 
by Mr. Eyton, in his Monograph on the Anatidce, and has received the name of Chloephaga, or Grasseater— 
not inappropriately given, as they are eminently grazing birds, and enter the water almost as seldom as the 
Cereopsis of New Holland. 
A third species of the same form is the now well-known Sandwich Island Goose {Chloephaga sandvichensis), 
introduced into this country in 1829, by the late Lady Glengall. But the finest and most recent addition to 
this eminently “acclimatizable” group is the Euddy-headed Goose {C. rnbidiceps), of the Falkland Islands, 
where it is commonly known by the name of the “Brent Goose.” The latter bird, a very beautiful species, is 
closely allied to the Ashy-headed Goose (which is very common on the adjacent shores of South America, but 
occurs only as a straggler in the Falklands) and has also both sexes similarly coloured. It was only first 
imported into England in 1860, through the exertions of Capt. C. C. Abbott, late in command of detachments 
at Port Stanley, and forms a brilliant addition to the Society’s full series of hardy waterfowl. 
See “ Proceedings of the Zoological Society,” 1857, p. 128, and 1858, p. 289. 
