| Barnacle Goose | ||||||||||||||
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| Branta leucopsis (Bechstein, 1803) |
The Barnacle Goose (Branta leucopsis) belongs to the genus Branta of black geese, which contains species with largely black plumage, distinguishing them from the grey Anser species. Despite its superficial similarity to the Brent Goose, genetic analysis has shown it is an eastern derivative of the Cackling Goose lineage.
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Description
The Barnacle Goose is a medium-sized goose with a white face and black head,all of the neck, and upper breast. Its belly is white. The wings and its back are silver-gray with black-and-white bars that look like they are shining when the light reflects on it. During flight a V-shaped white rump patch and the silver-gray underwing linings are visible.
Distribution
Barnacle Geese breed mainly on the Arctic islands of the North Atlantic. There are three main populations, with separate breeding and wintering ranges; from west to east:
- Breeding in eastern Greenland, wintering on the Hebrides of western Scotland and in western Ireland. Population about 40,000.
- Breeding on Svalbard, wintering on the Solway Firth on the England/Scotland border. Population about 24,000.
- Breeding on Novaya Zemlya, wintering in the Netherlands. Population about 130,000.
- A new fourth population, derived from the Novaya Zemlya population, has become established since 1975 breeding on the Baltic Sea islands (Estonia, Finland, Denmark, and Sweden), and wintering in the Netherlands. Population about 8,000.
Small numbers of feral birds, derived from escapes from zoo collections, also breed in other north European countries. Occasionally, a wild bird will appear in the Northeastern United States or Canada, but care must be taken to separate out wild birds from escaped individuals, as Barnacle Geese are popular waterfowl with collectors.
Ecology, behavior and life history
Barnacle Geese frequently build their nests high on mountain cliffs; away from predators (primarily Arctic Foxes and Polar Bears) but also away from food. Like all geese, the goslings are not fed by the adults. Instead of bringing food to the newly hatched goslings, the goslings are brought to the ground. Unable to fly, the three day old goslings jump off the cliff and fall; their small size, feathery down, and very light weight helps to protect some of them from serious injury when they hit the rocks below, but many die from the impact. Arctic foxes are attracted by the noise made by the parent geese during this time and capture many dead or injured goslings. The foxes also stalk the young as they are led by the parents to wetland feeding areas.
Its call is a "kaw".
Conservation
The Barnacle Goose is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.2
Folklore
The natural history of barnacle goose was long surrounded with a legend claiming that they were born of driftwood:
Nature produces [Bernacae] against Nature in the most extraordinary way. They are like marsh geese but somewhat smaller. They are produced from fir timber tossed along the sea, and are at first like gum. Afterwards they hang down by their beaks as if they were a seaweed attached to the timber, and are surrounded by shells in order to grow more freely. Having thus in process of time been clothed with a strong coat of feathers, they either fall into the water or fly freely away into the air. They derived their food and growth from the sap of the wood or from the sea, by a secret and most wonderful process of alimentation. I have frequently seen, with my own eyes, more than a thousand of these small bodies of birds, hanging down on the sea-shore from one piece of timber, enclosed in their shells, and already formed. They do not breed and lay eggs like other birds, nor do they ever hatch any eggs, nor do they seem to build nests in any corner of the earth.3
The legend was widely repeated in, for example, Vincent of Beauvais's great encyclopedia. However, it was also criticized by other medieval authors, including Albertus Magnus.3
This belief may be related to the fact that these geese were never seen in summer, when they were supposedly developing underwater (they were actually breeding in remote Arctic regions).
Based on this legend—indeed, the legend may have been invented for this purpose4—some Irish clerics considered barnacle goose flesh to be acceptable fast day food, a practice that was criticized by a contemporary English author:
...Bishops and religious men (viri religiosi) in some parts of Ireland do not scruple to dine off these birds at the time of fasting, because they are not flesh nor born of flesh.... But in so doing they are led into sin. For if anyone were to eat of the leg of our first parent (Adam) although he was not born of flesh, that person could not be adjudged innocent of eating meat.3
At the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215), Pope Innocent III explicitly prohibited the eating of these geese during Lent, arguing that despite their unusual reproduction, they lived and fed like ducks and so were of the same nature as other birds.5
The question of the nature of barnacle geese also came up as a matter of Jewish dietary law in the Halakha, and Rabbi Tam (1100-71) determined that they were kosher (even if born of trees) and should be slaughtered following the normal prescriptions for birds.3
Etymology
In English, the term "barnacle" originally referred only to this species of goose and only later to barnacles. It is sometimes claimed that the word comes from an Celtic word for "limpet", but the sense-history seems to go in the opposite direction.6
References
- ^ BirdLife International (2004). Branta leucopsis. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 11 May 2006.
- ^ "Annex 2: Waterbird species to which the Agreement applies" (PDF). UNEP/AEWA (United Nations Environment Programme/African-Eurasian Waterbird Agreement). Retrieved on 2008-07-20.
- ^ a b c d Giraldus Cambrensis "Topographica Hiberniae" (1187), quoted in Edward Heron-Allen, Barnacles in Nature and in Myth, 1928, reprinted in 2003, p. 10. ISBN 0766157555 full text at Google Books
- ^ Edwin Ray Lankester, Diversions of a Naturalist, 1915, reprinted 1970. full text at Google Books. ISBN 0836914716: "this identification was due to the exercise of a little authority on the part of the clergy in both France and Britain, who were thus enabled to claim the abundant "barnacle goose" as a fish in its nature and origin rather than a fowl, and so to use it as food on the fast-days of the Church" (p. 119)
- ^ Edwin Ray Lankester, Diversions of a Naturalist, 1915, p. 119full text
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition, 1989
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Barnacle Goose |
- RSPB A to Z of UK Birds
- Barnacle Goose videos on the Internet Bird Collection
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 29 November 2008, at 09:50.
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