Brant

Branta bernicla

Group: Waterfowl
Size class: Small (under 10 kg)
Family: Anatidae

Range

North America
Europe
Arctic

Habitat

Coast

Range

Countries it is found in

37 countries

Austria
Belarus
Belgium
Bermuda
Canada
Cuba
Czechia
Denmark
Estonia
Faroe Islands
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Greenland
Guernsey
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Isle of Man
Italy
Japan
Jersey
Kazakhstan

Range from:Wikipedia country bird lists, GBIF occurrence records — read 2026-08-05

Chapter 01

Overview

The brant or brent goose (Branta bernicla) is a small goose with three subspecies, all breeding on high-Arctic tundra and wintering on temperate sea coasts. Linnaeus described it in 1758 and restricted its type locality to Sweden; Branta is a Latinised form of the Old Norse brandgás, 'burnt goose'. The epithet, Medieval Latin for barnacle, records a myth dating back at least to the twelfth century that the bird hatched from barnacles. Once scarce, the world population grew more than tenfold to 400,000–500,000 by the mid-1980s; the IUCN rates it least concern.

Chapter 02

Identification

A small goose with a short, stubby bill: 55–66 cm long, 106–121 cm across the wings and weighing 0.88–2.2 kg. The undertail is pure white and the black tail is the shortest of any goose. Head and neck are black, with a small white patch on each side of the neck. The dark-bellied nominate race is uniformly dark grey-brown; the pale-bellied B. b. hrota has flanks and belly clearly paler than the back. Its call is a guttural, gurgling 'prrok', from which the Swedish name prutgås comes.

Chapter 03

Behaviour

Almost wholly herbivorous. In winter it was once strictly coastal, feeding on eelgrass and sea lettuce in tidal estuaries; in recent decades it has also moved onto farmland a short way inland, grazing grass and winter cereals. It nests on the ground near water and lays three to five eggs, incubated for 23 to 24 days; the goslings walk, swim and feed within a day. Pairs mate for life and migrate to the winter range as families, the adults defending feeding territory around their young.

Chapter 04

Hunting

The prutgås has no general open season in Sweden's hunting ordinance. It falls under the African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement (AEWA). The barnacle myth had a practical consequence: in County Kerry in Ireland, until relatively recently, Catholics could eat the bird on a Friday because it counted as fish.