Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE GOOSE-LIKE BIRDS

THE SWANS, GEESE, DUCKS, AND MERGANSERS

Barnacle Goose

In western Europe this group is represented by the Barnacle Goose (B. leucopsis), which is so called on account of the curious belief which gained credence from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries, that they were developed from barnacles. Thus Giraldus Cambrensis, writing in 1187, says: “There are here many birds which are called Bernacae, which nature produces in a manner contrary to nature, and very wonderful. They are like marsh-geese, but smaller.

They are produced from fir timber tossed about at sea, and are at first like eggs on it. Afterwards they hang down by their beaks, as if from a sea-weed attached to the wood, and are enclosed in shells that they may grow the more freely.

Having thus, in course of time, been clothed with a strong covering of feathers, they either fall into the water, or seek their liberty in the air by flight. The embryo geese derive their growth and nutriment from the moisture of the wood or of the sea, in a secret and most marvelous manner.

I have seen with my own eyes more than a thousand minute bodies of these birds hanging from one piece of timber on the shore, enclosed in shells, and already formed.”Pages of testimony of a similar character might be quoted from Olaus Magnus, Sir John Maundeville, and many others.

The Barnacle Goose is about twenty-five inches in length and has the mantle bluish gray barred with black and gray, the wings and tail blackish, the lower parts white, and the head mostly white, with the lores, crown, neck, and chest black. It is found in Greenland, Iceland, Spitzbergen, and Nova Zembla, where it is supposed to breed, but its nest and eggs are unknown. It winters in northern Europe, coming occasionally to the east coast of North America.

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