This abandonment of southern Spain by the Bean-Goose (presuming it was ever found therein) appears inexplicable. The species has lately been recognised as divisible into various races or subspecies (differing chiefly in the form and colour of the beak),[73] for which reason it may here be recorded that of the few Bean-Geese examined twenty years ago in Spain, the beak was invariably dark to below the nasal orifice, with a dark tip, and an intermediate band of rufous-chestnut.
Of the other three members of the genus, the Pink-footed Goose (Anser brachyrhynchus) has never occurred in Spain; while neither the white-fronted nor the lesser white-fronted species (A. albifrons and A. erythropus, L.) have ever been recorded save in an isolated instance in either case. We have never met with any one of them—indeed, the only wild-goose in our records, other than Greylag and half-a-dozen Bean-Geese, is a single Bernacle (Bernicla leucopsis), one of three that was shot at Santolalla by our late friend Mr. William Garvey.
Of the Greylags that winter in Andalucia, the great majority are adults—that is (presuming our diagnosis to be correct), scarcely one in four is a gosling of the year. The adult geese we distinguish by the spur on the wing-point of the ganders and generally by their larger size and heavier build. Their undersides, moreover, are more or less spotted or barred with black—some wear regular “barred waistcoats,” whereas the young birds are wholly plain white beneath. The legs and feet of the latter are also of the palest flesh-colour (some almost white), rarely showing any approximation to a pink shade, and their beaks vary from nearly white to palest yellow; whereas in the older, mostly “spot-breasted,” geese the beak is deep yellow to orange, and their legs and feet are distinctly pink—some as pronouncedly so as in A. brachyrhynchus. These “soft parts” are, however, subject to infinite variation, and the above definition is a careful deduction from the results of many years’ observation.[74]
On several occasions we have examined from a dozen to a score of geese without finding a single gosling among them. The largest proportion of the latter so recorded was on January 29, 1907, when of sixteen geese shot, five (or possibly six) were young birds of the year before. All these sixteen showed some white feathers on the forehead, and the heaviest pair (two old ganders) weighed together 18½ lbs.
As regards their weights, the following notes show the variation:—
During the severe drought of 1896, six geese weighed on November 26, when almost starving for food and water, ranged from 6¼ to 7¾ lbs. A month later, when rains had fallen, weights had increased to 8¼ to 9¼ lbs.
December 28, 1899.—The heaviest of 29 scaled 9¼ lbs.
January 30, 1905.—The geese this dry season are in fine condition. An old gander, shot at Martinazo, exceeded 10½ lbs., another pair, shot right and left, scaled 9½ and 10 lbs.
February 4, 1907.—Two geese, the heaviest of eleven shot this morning, weighed over 9 lbs. each, the pair scaling 18¼ lbs. It was a severe frost, the shallows being covered with ice, and as each goose fell, two bits of solid ice, in form as it were a pair of sandals, were found lying alongside it, these having been detached by the fall from the feet of the bird.
1906. November 28.—Two pure white geese observed on Santolalla to-day and on subsequent occasions. Though usually seen flying in company with packs of normally coloured geese, the white pair always kept together.