" The best plan of all is undoubtedly to shoot them after
dusk, or by moon-light. To be successful, it is necessary to
ascertain beforehand where they go to feed at night. The
villagers will readily give this information, but it is just as well
to know that shallow, weedy jhils, with a foreshore of mud
and slush, are favourite resorts, especially if the corn fields
around them arc nice and green. Having taken up his position
on the mud at sunset (their foot-prints and feathers will indicate
the spot where they generally settle) all the sportsman has to
do is to await their arrival patiently. They will soon put in an
appearance, and as gang after gang arrives and hovers above
him within easy shot, he will only have himself to blame if he
does not massacre them right and left. In this way, with an
ordinary gun, I have shot as many as thirty between sunset and
7-30 P.M."
l'rjevalski indicates yet another method by which these Geese
may be shot, which I confess never occurred to me, though
I have attracted Black Buck in this way. He says:—
" This Goose is also very curious, and I several times shot it
by performing the following manoeuvre.—As soon as I noticed
a pair flying, I at once lay down on the ground and commenced
waving my hat at them. The Geese came usually quite close
to me then. Altogether it is very tame ; but when pursued
much by men, it gets very shy."
Indian sportsmen who try this plan will oblige me greatly
by reporting the results.
The note of the Barrcd-hcadcd Goose is quite distinct from
that of the Grey Lag. It is sharper, harder, less sonorous, and
more strident. I hardly know how to put it in words, but it is
so distinct that you can never doubt, even when the flock is
passing over head high in air, during the night, to which species
it belongs. The two species never mingle companies ; you may
see half a dozen of the one, along with a flock of the other,
but whether feeding, sleeping, swimming, or flying, the parties
keep a little apart.
Like the Grey Lag this present species rarely takes to the
water unless disturbed, but whether flying, walking, or swimming,
it is a lighter built, more graceful and more active bird than
the other ; and though perhaps easier to stalk, it is much more
difficult to drive, or walk up to a given spot, than the Grey Lag.
1 have often had them in captivity ; but although at the Delhi
Gardens and at one are two other places I have known them to
live for years, they do not stand the heat so well as the Grey
Goose, and they never, I think, become quite so tame as these
latter, which, once they get to know you, will trot about awkwardly
at your heels like a lap-dog. None of the Geese of this
species that I have ever had, have laid in captivity.
My late, much lamented friend, Mr. Damant, drew attention
to the curious habit, which I have already noticed in the case of
the Grey Lag, that these Geese have of skylarking, when
descending to the water after feeding. He said :—
" In Manipur, I have often watched them returning from their
feeding grounds to the lake where they intend to pass the day;
their cry is heard before they can themselves be seen ; they then
appear flying in the form of a wedge, each bird keeping his
place with perfect regularity; when they reach the lake they circle
round once or twice, and, finally before settling, each bird tumbles
over in the air two or three times precisely like a tumbler
pigeon. After they have once settled they preserve no regular
formation."
Tins SPECIES breeds in thousands at the Tso-mourari Lake,
and other sweet-water and salt lakes in Laddkh, and equally
in all the innumerable lakes of the Thibetan Plateau.
I have never had the good fortune to obtain the eggs ;
perhaps I might have found a late nest had I thought of
hunting for it, but hundreds of goslings were already about, by
the latter end of June, and at that time I concluded that I was
too late for eggs. Drew, however, writing of an Island in the
Tso-mourari, says :—
" The island is about half a mile from the shore, near midway
in the length of the western side—it may be too yards
from corner to corner in one direction and 6 0 yards in another ;
it is of gneiss rock, rising only nine or ten feet above the
water; the soundings before given show that there is about
100 feet of water between the island and the near shore. This
little place, being ordinarily undisturbed by man, is a great
resort of the Gull, which in Ladakhi is called Chagharatse; the
surface was nearly all covered with its droppings, and there
were hundreds of the young about; most of these must have
been hatched near the beginning of July. Having heard that
it was a matter of interest with some ornithologists to learn
about the nidification of the Wild (Barred-headed) Goose, I
was on the look-out for information concerning it, and I found
that this island is one of the places where it lays its eggs. I
was told by the Champas that they find the eggs there just
before the ice breaks up—say the beginning of May ; after that
they have no means of reaching the island. I myself found
there a broken egg, but at the time I was on the island (the
last week in July), the young had all been hatched. A few
days later, I followed the same inquiry in the valley of the Salt
Lake, and on an earthy island in the fresh-water lake called
Panbuk, I found a nest where the mother was sitting with some
goslings and two eggs, one just breaking with the chick ; the
other egg I measured and found to be 3 J inches by 2 J, and very
nearly elliptical in form. The nest was a slight hollow, lined
with first, a few bits of a soft herb, then with feathers. I was