Thebrant orbrent goose (Branta bernicla) is a smallgoose of thegenusBranta. There are three subspecies, all of which winter along temperate-zone sea-coasts and breed on the high-Arctic tundra.
The brant and the similarbarnacle goose were previously considered to be the same species and believed to be the same creature as the barnacle.[8] Thatmyth can be dated back to at least the 12th century.Gerald of Wales claimed to have seen these birds hanging down from pieces of timber,William Turner accepted the theory, andJohn Gerard claimed to have seen the birds emerging from their shells. This myth arose because in the 1100s the migration of birds was unknown, but it was known that none of these birds was ever seen nesting, nor were eggs found, nor were goslings seen.[9] The legend persisted until the end of the 18th century. InCounty Kerry, until relatively recently, Catholics could eat this bird on a Friday because it counted as fish.[10]
The brant is a small goose with a short, stubby bill. It measures 55–66 cm (22–26 in) long, 106–121 cm (42–48 in) across the wings and weighs 0.88–2.2 kg (1.9–4.9 lb).[11][12][13][14] The under-tail is pure white, and the tail black and very short (the shortest of any goose).
The body of the dark-belliednominate subspeciesB. b. bernicla is fairly uniformly dark grey-brown all over, the flanks and belly not significantly paler than the back. The head and neck are black, with a small white patch on either side of the neck. With a population of about 250000, it breeds on the Arctic coasts of central and western Siberia and winters in coastal areas of western Europe, with over half the population in southern England, the rest between northern Germany and south-western France.
The pale-bellied formB. b. hrota appears blackish-brown and light grey in colour. The body is different shades of grey-brown all over, the flanks and belly are significantly paler than the back and present a marked contrast. The head and neck are black, with a small white patch on either side of the neck. The total population is about 250,000, with the main population breeding in northeastern Canada and wintering along theAtlantic coast of the U.S. fromMaine toGeorgia,[11] and two smaller populations, one breeding inFranz Josef Land,Svalbard, and northeasternGreenland and wintering in Denmark, northeast England, and Scotland, and the other breeding in the far-northeastern Canadian islands and wintering in Ireland, southwest England, and in a small but significant area, le havre de Regnéville, centered on the Sienne Estuary inManche (Northern France).[15] In Ireland it is recorded in winter from a number of areas includingLough Foyle,Strangford Lough,Tralee Bay andCastlemaine Harbour.[16][17][18]
The black formB. b. nigricans appears blackish-brown and white in colour. This form is a very contrastingly black and white bird, with a uniformly dark sooty-brown back, similarly coloured underparts (with the dark colour extending furthest back of the three forms) and a prominent white flank patch; it also has larger white neck patches, forming a near-complete collar. The population of about 125,000 breeds in northwestern Canada,Alaska and easternSiberia, and winters mostly on the west coast of North America from southern Alaska toCalifornia, but also some in east Asia, mainly Japan, also Korea and China. The population has been as high as 200,000 in 1981, and as low as 100,000 in 1987.[19]
The Asian populations of the black brant populations had previously been regarded as a separate subspeciesB. b. orientalis based on purported paler upperparts coloration; however, it is generally now believed that this is not correct, and they are assigned toB. b. nigricans.
A fourth form (sometimes known as the 'gray-bellied brant) has been proposed, although no formal subspecies description has been made as yet, for a population of birds breeding in central Arctic Canada (mainlyMelville Island), and wintering onPuget Sound on the American west coast around the U.S./Canada border. These birds are intermediate in appearance between black brant and pale-bellied brant, having brown upperparts and grey underparts which give less of a contrast with the white flank patch. It has also been proposed that, rather than being a separate subspecies, it is actually a result of interbreeding between these two forms, given that this population exhibits mixed characters.[20]
Individual birds when wintering generally remain in loose family-groups, together with others of the same sub-species, but there is overlap in some areas (for example Western Europe, see above); and this is also true in the breeding colonies. Outside the breeding season, individuals with characteristics of any subspecies may occasionally turn up with regular migrants, and there has been debate as to whether this is related to migration routing accidents, or to breeding range overlap, or even interbreeding.
The brant goose was once a strictly coastal bird in winter, rarely leaving tidalestuaries, where it feeds oneelgrass (Zostera marina)[21] and theseaweed,sea lettuce (Ulva).[11][22] On the east coast of North America, the inclusion of sea lettuce is a recent change to their diet, brought about by a blight on eelgrass in 1931 which had resulted in the near-extirpation of the brant. The few that survived changed their diet to include sea lettuce until the eelgrass eventually began to return. Brants have maintained this diet ever since as a survival strategy.[23] A similar collapse in eelgrass in Ireland in the 1930s also negatively impacted the population.[24] In recent decades, the brant has started using agricultural land a short distance inland, feeding extensively ongrass and winter-sowncereals. It has been suggested that they learnt this behaviour by following other species of geese. Food resource pressure may also be important in forcing this change, as the world population increased over 10-fold to 400,000-500,000 by the mid-1980s, possibly reaching thecarrying capacity of the estuaries. In the breeding season, it uses low-lying wet coastaltundra for both breeding and feeding. The nest is bowl-shaped, lined with grass and down, in an elevated location, often near a small pond.
^Lewis, Tyler L.; Ward, David H.; Sedinger, James S.; Reed, Austin; Derksen, Dirk V.; Carboneras, Carles; Christie, David; Kirwan, Guy M. (4 March 2020). Billerman, Shawn M (ed.). "Brant (Branta bernicla)".Birds of the World.doi:10.2173/bow.brant.01.
^"UK Brent Oil". One Financial Markets. Archived fromthe original on 15 February 2016. Retrieved25 August 2014.
Millington, Richard (1997). Separation of Black Brant, Dark-bellied Brent Goose and Pale-bellied Brent GooseBirding World 10(1):11–15; an identification paper
Sangster, George (2000). Taxonomic status ofbernicla andnigricans Brent GooseBritish Birds 91(12):565–572 (a critical re-evaluation of the claims made in the above paper by Syroechkovskiet al.)
Stamps from Canada, Germany, andJersey atbird-stamps.org (the Brent goose has also featured on stamps from Eire, Finland, and Oman; these can easily be found via any internet search-engine).
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