Game Birds of the World

The lesser white-fronted goose nests not only on tundra, but also on the lower parts of mountain streams, on mountain foothills, mountain lakes, and even on alpine precipices, often in thawing boggy areas or on stone fields. Like the larger species, it is a vegetarian, foraging in spring on freshly sprouting greenery. The very short bill of this species probably allows for extremely close cropping of low grasses, and on the wintering grounds the birds are sometimes found with white- fronted geese on saltwort-dominated steppes and other semiarid terrain. Lesser white-fronted geese return to their subarctic breeding grounds of Russia toward the end of May or the beginning of June, and as early as the first half of May in Lapland.

The nest sites are usually on newly thawed areas close to water, often on tundra, under dwarf birch vegetation, or in rocky areas on mountains. There is no indication that the birds are at all colonial or tend to nest in the vicinity of raptors or gulls. Clutches typically are of from 3–8 eggs, and most often consist of 4 or 5. The incubation period, based on information from captivity, is 25 days, and as in other geese incubation is performed by the female, with the male remaining close at hand throughout the entire period. Almost nothing is known of the birds' behavior during the fledging period, which requires about five weeks, but undoubtedly the adults complete their own flightless period during this time. During the period of molt the birds often move to mountain lakes or the mouths of rivers with low accessibility to humans.