The White-fronted Goose is included in Professor Ansted’s list, and marked as occurring in Guernsey.  The Greylag and the Bean Goose are also included in the list, the Greylag marked as occurring in Guernsey and Sark, and the Bean as only in Guernsey; but no information beyond the letter marking the locality is given as to either; and the only specimen in the Museum is the White-fronted Goose above mentioned, neither of the others being represented there now, nor do I remember ever having seen a specimen of either there.

136.  BRENT GOOSE. Bernicla brenta, Brisson.  French, “Oie cravant,” “Bernache cravant.”—­The Brent Goose is a regular winter visitant to all the Islands, varying, however, in numbers in different years:  sometimes it is very numerous, and affords good sport during the winter to the fishermen, who generally take a gun in the boat with them as soon as the close season is over, sometimes before.  The flocks generally consist mostly of young birds of the year; the fully adult birds, however, though fewer in number, are in sufficient numbers to make a very fair show.

Professor Ansted includes it in his list, but only marks it as occurring in Guernsey and Sark; it is, however, quite as common about Herm and Alderney.  There is no specimen at present in the Museum.

137.  MUTE SWAN. Cygnus olor, Linnaeus.  French, “Cygne tubercule.”—­I do not believe this bird has ever visited the Channel Islands in a thoroughly wild state, though it is pretty widely spread over Europe; its range, however, being generally more to the east than the Channel Islands.  Mr. Couch, however, at page 4939 of the ‘Zoologist’ for 1874, records the occurrence of two Mute Swans on the 7th of September at the Braye Pond, where they were shot.  He also says that “five others passed over the Island the same day; they were flying low, and, judging from their colour, were young birds.”  As no one in the Islands keeps Swans, these were most probably a family party that had strayed away from the Swannery at Abbotsbury, on the opposite coast of Dorset, where some three hundred and fifty pairs still breed annually.  I have myself seen as many six hundred and thirty birds there, the hens sitting and the old males each resting quietly by the nest, keeping guard over the female and the eggs.  The distance from the Abbotsbury Swannery, which is at the extreme end of the Chesil Beach, in Dorsetshire, to Guernsey is nothing great for Swans to wander; and they often, both old and young (after the young are able to fly), wander away from their home as far as Exmouth on one side and Weymouth Bay or the Needles on the other; and an expedition to Guernsey would be little more than to one of these places, and by September the young, which are generally hatched tolerably early in June (I have seen a brood out with their parents on the water as early as the 27th of May), would be perfectly able to wander, either by themselves or with their parents, as far as the Channel Islands,