Game Birds and Game Fishes of the Pacific Coast

by Harry Thom Payne

Subfamily, ANSERENAE - Geese

Genus		Species		Common Names		Range. (All breed far north.)
Chen		hyperborea		White goose (large)		From Southern California north.
		rossi		Ross' goose Small white goose		From Mexico north.
Anser		albifrons gambeli		White-fronted goose Gray goose		From Mexico north.
Dendrocygna		fulva		Fulvous tree duck Mexican tree duck Cavalier		From Central California south through Mexico. Breeds from Central California to Central Mexico.
Branta		canadensis		Canada goose Honker		From central Mexico north.
		canadensis hutchinsii		Hutchins' goose		From Southern California north.
		canadensis occidentalis		White-cheeked goose		Inland plains from Central California north.
		canadensis minima		Black brant Cackling goose		From Southern California north.
		nigricans		Black sea brant		On certain bays from Magdalena, Lower California north.
Philacte		canagica		Emperor goose		A rare visitor south of Humboldt Bay, California.

Subfamily, CYGNINAE - Swans

Genus		Species		Common Names		Range. (All breed far north.)
Olor		columbianus		Whistling swan		From Oregon north. Rarely as far south as Central California.
		buccinator		Trumpeter swan		From Southern California north.

THE WATERFOWL

The great variety of the waterfowl of the Pacific Coast, the wonderful numbers in which they are found and the excellent shooting they afford, forms a subject, which, to do it justice, would require the space of an ordinary volume.

With the exception of the Gulf tier of the Southern states, waterfowl on the Atlantic Coast are but birds of passage, tarrying for a time on their way to milder winter quarters; tourists loitering for a day or two at attractive by-stations as they wing their way south in the fall and again on their return north in the spring. They are leaving the isolation of the far north or the mountain lakes and marshes where they spent the summer rearing their young and they are seeking more favorable feeding grounds in the milder climate of the South, where animal and vegetable life is not in the state of hibernation which prevents it from furnishing them with an abundance of food during their southern sojourn.

Over the larger portion of our hunting grounds what is the beginning of the calendar year is in fact the beginning of our spring. When the frost king lays his hand upon all vegetable and insect life in the East, spreading his white shroud over field and pasture and breaking with his icy sleet from the vine and the brush their clinging leaves; when from the trees have fallen the last vestige of their autumnal crowns of gold and crimson; when the last flower has shed its petals; when the last hum of insect is heard and the last song of bird has died away on the southern horizon—'tis then the early rains of the Coast start the new sown grain in the fields, give life again to the grasses of the plains, carpet the foothills and the valleys with the gold and purple and crimson of innumerable flowers, and our veritable spring commences.

With us, therefore, waterfowl are not passing pilgrims, tarrying for a few days only as they rest and feed on their way to the open waters and green pastures in which they intend to pass those months marked winter on the calendar of the year. They are not mere hurrying flocks alighting now and again as they wing their way back to their breeding grounds in the spring But ours is the Mecca to which they journey; ours the feeding grounds on which they assemble from the lakes and marshes of the Arctic; from the whole chain of the Aleutian Islands; from the inland seas of British Columbia and from the mountain lakes of our own Sierras from Washington to Mexico. Here on the bays, estuaries and marshes of the coast and the lakes and ponds of the valleys, throughout the whole length of these hunting grounds, countless millions of these birds have found their winter feeding grounds for unnumbered ages. No cold, no ice, no snow, no howling blizzards to stop them in their search for food or disturb their midday rest upon our quiet waters. In warmth they feed upon the tender shoots of the young grasses that fringe their watery haunts or bask in sunshine on the sandy shores.