WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE.
OWYDD WYI.l.T, OF THK ANCIENT BRITISH
ITE-FRONTEB WILD GOOSE. LAUGHING GO
Anser albifrons, JENYNS.
Anser erythropus, FLEMING.
Amis albifrom. PENNANT. MONT ACT.
Anser—A Goose. Albifrons. A/bus—While. From—The forehead.
THE Laughing Goose is the common species in Sweden and the
other countries of old Scandinavia—Lapland, Norway, and Denmark;
and visits also the southern parts of Russia, Poland, Prussia, France,
Germany, Italy, and Holland.
It belongs too to some parts of Asia—Japan, according to Tennninck,
Siberia, and the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea; and likewise to
America, moving, at the different seasons of the year, to and from the
regions within the Arctic circle and the United States, through the
Fur Countries.
They breed in Tornea Lapland, or Lapmark, a province of Sweden;
also in Iceland.
In this- country they have occurred in greater or less numbers in
Northumberland, Durham, Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Hampshire, Sussex,
(lambridgeshire, Devonshire, and ('ornwall, where, in 18:^9, they
appeared in considerable flocks; six seen on the Looe River, two shot
at Helford, and another near Merthcn, December, £(>th., 1849; in fact,
no doubt, though they have made no 'matches' here, they belong to
' A l l England.' Meyer mentions one shot by him in February, 1847,
on the Thames, near London.
This species is occasionally seen in Northamptonshire, as the Hon.
T. L. Powys tells me. It used to be a winter visitor to the fens in
Cambridgeshire, varying in numbers according to the comparative
mildness or severity of the season. In Norfolk several occurred near
VOL. v. o