Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE GOOSE-LIKE BIRDS

THE SWANS, GEESE, DUCKS, AND MERGANSERS

The Brant or Brant Goose

(B. bernicla) is found on the seacoast of eastern North America and western Europe, breeding only within the Arctic Circle. It is a little smaller than the last and has the upper parts brownish gray, the lower parts slate-gray, and the head entirely black, with a white patch on the sides of the neck. The American form, which is whiter below than the European, is a distinct subspecies (B. glaucogaster), though it also occurs in western Europe.

The nest, placed on the ground, is composed of grasses, moss, etc., and is lined with down, and the eggs, smooth and creamy white in color, are usually four. Its habits are similar to those of its relatives, it being, however, rather less active than the Canada Goose, and not flying with the same precision or rapidity. The Black Brant (B. nigricans) is the western representative of the last species and may be known by the nearly complete white collar, and much darker under parts.

The Brant Geese are present in the Southern Hemisphere, but as they differ more or less from those of the north they have been separated as a subfamily (Chloephagince), but the characters are not very important and some writers place them all under the genus last considered. Of the six species fqund in southern South America, Mr. W. H. Hudson considers the Ashy-headed Goose (Chloephaga poliocephala) as the handsomest. It has the head, neck, and scapulars grayish lead-color, the breast and upper back chestnut, banded with black, the abdomen, under wing-coverts, bend of the wing, and secondaries white, the primaries, lower back, tail, and wing-coverts black, the latter edged with shining green and tipped with white, and the under tail-coverts chestnut-rufous.

This bird spends the summer in Patagonia and in winter migrates northward to southern Argentina, appearing on the pampas in small flocks or occasionally in parties of one or two hundred. Other species are the Andean Goose (C. melanop-tera), an inhabitant of the high Andes of Peru and Bolivia and the central provinces of Chile, coming down to the plains in winter; the Upland Goose (C. magellanica) of the Falkland Islands and Patagonia, and the Barred Upland .Goose (C. inornata), a northern form of the last, found in Chile and Argentina.

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