raí ü á ! l u l l .
Anser segetum, Gmeün.
Vernacular Names.—[None.]
HAVE never seen an Indian-killed specimen of a
Bean Goose* but I have been on several occasions
assured of late years of the occurrence of this species,
by people whom I believe able to recognize it,
or at any rate the sub-group to which it belongs ; and
Blyth distinctly states, (Ibis, 186S) that Mr. Gould
has a skin of the Common Bean Goose, procured in
the Deccan.
I say sub-group advisedly, because, so far as I can judge,
there are several Bean Geese with orange feet, and orange and
black bills, differing in size, tone of colour, size and shape of bill,
amount and distribution of black on the bills, viz., arveusis,
segctum, obscurus, serrirostris, middeudorffi, &c, of which the first,
second, and fourth, at any rate, are very easily separable.
Our artist has figured arveusis (commonly confounded by
English writers with segetum). The true segetum has much
more of the bill black—in fact all black, but a broad orange
band across it, not unlike in position, but rather larger than the
pink or red band on the bill of bracliyrhynchus.
I have heard of Bean Geese from Sind, Oudh, and the Central
Provinces, and Blyth, as above noticed, says, the Deccan also ;
but as I have seen no specimen, and as even in Europe the
different species of this sub-group have not been generally
discriminated, I cannot give any exact details of distribution
here or elsewhere, and can only say that the distribution in
Europe, Northern Africa and Northern and Central Asia of
the Bean Geese as a group, seems to be very much the same as
that of the Grey Lag Geese.
In Norfolk we used often to get a Bean Goose in autumn
and winter, and birds of this sub-group are pretty abundant
visitors at these seasons to many parts of the British Isles, where,
however, they are not known to breed. There is no country
in Europe where Bean Geese do not occur on passage or during
* It would be interesting to learn how David and Oustalet (Ois. d. 1 Chine, 491
have ascertained that this species " est fort commune dans Vlnde" 1