past ; round comes the Ring-Tail again, down dives the Goose ;
again and again these manoeuvres are repeated, and at last
either the Eagle gives up the chase, or the Goose, (and this,
I think, is most generally the case) diving a little too slowly,
gets caught by the long le<;s (which are each time clashed their
whole length into the water) before it has got deep enough
down, and the Eagle then flies slowly to the shore, bearing
its prey in its talons. An Indian Grey Goose will weigh on the
average 7fts., but I have repeatedly seen good-sized Grey Geese
carried off in the claws of one of these Eagles, the bird flying
slowly and low over the surface of the water,but still quite steadily.
Even in lakes and broads they are very tame birds if
properly handled, and a man who knows what he is about, by
moving backwards and forwards slowly, can walk a flock of
Auscr citiereus before him up to any point he pleases, where
some hidden comrade awaits their advent.
Provided the driver never walks at them, but always as if
passing by them, and does not walk quicker than they can swim
along lazily, and especially if he has a buffalo with him, the
entire herd will progress slowly in the required direction with
very little regard to wind, and, strange to say, with very little
hesitation though repeatedly fired at in the same way. On one
of the large jhils in the Etdwah District (Sarsai-Nawur) lived
a shikarree who killed on the average a Goose a day as long as
the water lasted. Every two or three days he used to lay up
with his old match-lock at some convenient point, get his boy to
drive the Geese, fire his shot and kill his one, two, three or more.
His whole secret was, that he never showed himself; he crawled
away through the rushes as soon as the flock had flown away,
and let the boy, after a time, work his way to where the dead
birds were and pick them up. Wounded birds he never chased,
(indeed one year I got a boat and shot eleven of his winged
birds that had accumulated since the beginning of the
season), and the herd never knew how they were shot or by
whom, and I doubt not concluded that it was an inevitable dispensation
of Providence. I shot six Geese I think this way, 011
two occasions, but gave it up as you had to lay in water and
mud some three inches deep at least an hour before firing, and
at least five minutes afterwards, and had a ten minutes wet
crawl to and from the shooting point.
The cackling of a frightened flock is a perfect Babel of discords,
but, on the other hand, the cackle of a large flock flying
over head at night, high in air, is most sonorous and musical,
and there are few sportsmen through whose hearts it does not
send a pleasant thrill. To me it comes ever " like the odour of
brine from the ocean," redolent with memories of happy boyish
days, when before Drainage Commissioners and Steam Mills,
Wild Geese were common enough in winter upon our East
Norfolk " ronds and ma'shes,"
Geese of this species tame very readily, and are often kept in
captivity by natives. A broken-winged bird will be on good
terms with you and the whole poultry yard within a fortnight
after its capture. They stand the hot weather perfectly, and
constantly breed and lay in captivity; but the young, though
often hatched, rarely, if ever, reach maturity.
This species is probably the original stock from which most
of the domestic Gccsc of Europe, as also some of our tame Geese
in Northern India, have descended ; but in other parts of India
the domestic Geese appear to have been derived cither entirely
from the Northern and Eastern Asiatic Goose, A. cygnoides, (no
wild specimen of which has as yet been recorded within our
limits, though I suspect its occurrence in North-east Assam), or
to be, as Blyth says, a prolific hybrid between the derivatives of
the two species. Certainly in the Calcutta market I have seen
some birds that, but for a somewhat coarser and paunchier look,
could not have been distinguished from wild A. cygnoides.
Some Wild Geese are very good eating, some quite unfit for
the table. As I remarked in the case of the Common Crane, much
depends upon how they have been living for six weeks or two
months previous to being shot. Birds recently arrived from
northern climes are, as a rule, not worth cooking ; even fat grainfed
birds that have been spending their days in marshes and
broads are often very indifferent. Again, even grain-fed birds
that have been spending their days on the banks of some pure
river, like the Chambal, are not always equally good. It is well to
select for yourself, when distributing the day's spoils to the camp
followers, the birds of the year, weighing 61bs. or so, and all
white underneath, the old, heavy ones much marked below,
though fat and well flavoured are too often tough and hard. As
a rule, under like conditions, the barred-headed or Indian Goose
is better eating than the Grey Lag.
I DO not think that this species breeds within our limits.
Adams, no doubt, in one of his papers says that it breeds on the
Ladakh Lakes, but I have never seen it there, and in another
paper he says it is the Barred-headed Goose (of which thousands
do breed on these lakes) and the White-fronted Goose, (which,
however, I have never seen there) that breed in Laddkh.
In more northern regions, where they do breed, Dresser tells us
that " the nest is placed on the ground, and is rather loosely constructed
of grass, dried flags, &c, &c, is tolerably well shaped ;
but soon after the eggs are deposited, becomes trampled down
out of shape. It is without any true lining until the eggs are
deposited, when the female plucks down off her breast to cover
the eggs, until her breast is almost denuded of its soft covering.
When the nest is well cushioned with down, it is a tolerably sure
sign^ that incubation has commenced ; and as she sits she keeps
continually plucking and adding down to what is already there