Animals: Blue Geese

Little known (its eggs were found only three years ago), seldom seen except in the far South (it stops infrequently on its flight from Baffin Land), is the great blue goose. Last week President Thomas Gilbert Pearson of the National Association of Audubon Societies concluded an airplane inspection of the many blue geese that winter in southern Louisiana. Near the mouth of the Mississippi he encountered a flock three miles long, half a mile wide. The geese were flying in three strata. Dr. Pearson estimated there were between 600,000 and a million of them. Because they migrate so quickly hunters get less than 1,000 of the two millions that winter in Louisiana. Audubon experts are satisfied that the blue goose is one American wildfowl that has not decreased in numbers in recent years.

Slate blue, the geese have white heads and upper necks when they fly south. But in the autumn a copperish red smudge appears on their heads. Dr. Pearson thinks it is caused by something they drink.