AN SERES. ANATIDJi. admit this species as a genuine visitor to our islands, the
C h e n a lo p e x aegyptiaca (Linnaeus*).
THE EGYPTIAN GOOSE.
Anser Egyptiacus.
Chenalopex, Stephens +.—Bill as long as the head, slender, straight, the tip
rounded, the margin laminated ; the upper mandible curved, its tip hooked ; the
lower flat. Nostrils basal. Wings rather long, broad, armed with a bare knob.
Tarsus stout, reticulated ; anterior toes rather long, connected by a web; hind
toe free, elevated. Tail consisting of fourteen rounded feathers.
E x c e p t io n s have been made—and, in the opinion of the
Editor, most justly—to the admission of the Egyptian
Goose into the Catalogue of our British Birds, on the ground
that the specimens, though killed at large, or apparently in a
wild state, had probably escaped from the waters of parks or
pleasure grounds, where they had been bred and fostered on
account of the beauty of their plumage. In deciding to
* Anas cegyptiaca, Linnseus, Syst. Nat. Ed. 12, i. p. 197 (1766).
+ Shaw’s (Jen. Zool. xii. pt. ii. p. 41 (1824).
Author appears to have been influenced by a questionable
statement by Colonel Hawker, and by the erroneous assertions
of Temminck. The former has been cited as mentioning
“ two killed in Norfolk, and three at Long-parish in
Hampshire, in the winter of 1823; and the next year again,
daring some tremendous gales from the west, a flock of about
eighty appeared near the same place, when two more were
killed.” Hawker, however, really gives the numeral eighty
with a (/), on the gossip of some of his wild-fowlers, adding
that he has no doubt the birds were importations, and
considering that eight is the usual number of an unpinioned
brood which generally takes wing simultaneously, it is more
than probable that there may have been some misunderstanding.
On the Continent there is not one single occurrence in
Western Europe which is free from more than suspicion of
very recent escape; Temminck’s statement that this species
has been killed on the Danube, in Turkey, and in Sicily,
is absolutely unconfirmed; and the assertions of Yon der
Miihle and Lindermayer that it visits Greece, have not
induced Mr. Dresser to include it in his ‘ Birds of Europe.’
Besides various instances of single specimens of the
Egyptian Goose having been obtained in this country, a
flock of five were seen on the Fern Islands in April 1830.
A small flock visited the Tweed in February 1832. Three
were shot at Campsie, near Glasgow, in November 1832.
Mr. Wallace, of Douglas, sent the Author word that a flock
of nine were seen in the Isle of Man, in September 1838.
Four were shot on the Severn, near Bridgewater, in
February 1840; two were shot in Dorsetshire in 1836 ;
and Colonel Hawker’s record has already been mentioned.
Other examples have been killed in Kent, Sussex, Dorsetshire,
Hampshire, Somersetshire (where numbers have been
kept, and allowed to fly at Sandhill, Cothelston, and
Lydeard, near Taunton), Devonshire, Cornwall, Norfolk,
Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, &c.;
also in Ireland, on the Boyne.
In a wild state, this species is found along the Nile valley