Game Birds of the World

This small sheldgoose is native to southern South America, where it inhabits wooded and swampy habitats, where rushes and other wetland plants occur in small openings in temperate forests. Unlike the upland goose, this species readily perches in trees, and usually nests among them. However, they forge on the same grasses and herbs as the other species of this strictly South American group of goose-like birds.

Although few nests have been found in the wild, they have usually been hidden in tall grasses that are arched over the nest, concealing it, or in the hollows of burned trunks and branches in large trees. Nesting apparently is well underway by November, with many chicks hatching by late November. Clutches are usually of 4–6 eggs, and incubation by the female lasts 30 days. Little is known of the past-hatching period in wild birds, but the birds move north in small flocks as winter approaches, generally to about as far north as Buenos Aires Province. Outside the breeding season ashy-headed sheldgeese gather in flocks from southern Chile and Argentina south to Tierra del Fuego.