Chinese Goose

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Related to Swan Goose: greylag goose

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Chinese Goose

(Cygnopsis cygnoides), a bird of the order Anseriformes. The Chinese goose is 80 to 93 cm long and weighs as much as 4.5 kg. The bill is flat, with a slight bulge; the base is bordered with white. The crown and hindneck are rusty brown, and the back is dull brownish.

The Chinese goose is distributed in northern Mongolia, in Northeast China, and, in the USSR, in southern Siberia from Lake Zaisan and the Altai to Sakhalin. It winters in North China. It arrives at its breeding grounds in early April and settles in pairs along the banks of rivers and shores of lakes, both open and reedgrown; in mountains it occurs to an elevation of 2,400 m. A clutch contains six to eight eggs; the incubation period is approximately one month. The Chinese goose, everywhere much reduced in numbers, is of no commercial value. It is the ancestor of the Chinese breed of domestic goose.

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Key words: Wintering water birds, Poyang Lake, bean goose, Tundra Swan, Swan goose.

Bean goose (Anser fabalis), Tundra swan (Cygnus columbianus), and swan goose (Anser cygnoides) were dominant in Poyang Lake, accounting for 18.40%, 13.29%, and 10.58% of total bird numbers respectively (Table II).

Pied AvCet (Recurvirostra avosetta), bean goose, and swan goose were dominant in PHF, accounting for14.55%, 10.73%, and 10.01% of total numbers respectively.

Bean goose, Tundra swan, and swan goose were the common dominant species between this study and that of two lakes in Anhui (Chen et al., 2011).

Abundance, Distribution and Diversity Variations of Wintering Water Birds in Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province, China