The brant is a small goose. It is 1.9-2 feet (0.58-0.61 m) in length with a wingspan of 3.4-3.5 feet (1-1.1 m)
It has a dark brown or black head, neck, and chest, and a white band on its neck. It has a white rump, dark wing feathers, and a black bill, legs, and feet. Its belly is light brown, and its back is blackish-brown.
The brant eats green plants, including eelgrass and sea lettuce. It usually does not dive for its food; instead, it feeds during low tide and pulls up submerged grasses. Sometimes it uproots extra plants while feeding. When the tide rises, the plants float, and the brant continues feeding on them at the surface.
A large part of the brant’s diet is eelgrass. In the 1930s, a disease devastated eelgrass, and the brant population dropped. The brants that survived switched to eating sea lettuce. Eelgrass recovered, and today the brant population has risen.
Brants arrive at their breeding grounds, already paired, in early June. Brants nest in colonies in lowland areas of the tundra and prefer small islets in ponds and small lakes.
Female brants lay 3-5 eggs in a nest of moss, lichen, seaweed, and down feathers in a depression in the ground. When the female leaves the nest to feed, she covers the eggs with down feathers to keep them warm.
The eggs take a little under a month to hatch. The chicks leave the nest after hatching, and their mother leads them to forage for food. The chicks fledge (develop flight feathers) in 40-50 days, but they stay with their parents through the winter. Brant pairs usually remain together and return to the same breeding ground year after year.
The brant has a lifespan of 12-20 years in the wild. The oldest brant on record was a female that lived to be over 27 years old.
Brants are long-distance migrators. Some fly 3,000 miles (4,828 km)from their nesting grounds on the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the coast of Mexico.
Other groups migrate from the Arctic down the Hudson Bay to the Atlantic Coast.
Brants don’t migrate in V’s like Canada geese or straight lines like snow geese. They fly in unorganized groups. They are very vocal during migration, making a loud “cronk” sound.
The brant is also known as the brent goose.
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Brants don’t breed in New Hampshire, but they can be seen in the state in the winter.
The brant breeds in coastal Alaska and Arctic Canada.
It winters along both coasts south to California, the Carolinas, and Mexico.
Brants are also found in Europe and Asia.
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