310 ANATIDiE.
heads are less likely to escape between the shot than those
of smaller fowl. On one occasion I knocked down eight at
a shot, seven old ones and a brown one, and they averaged
nineteen pounds each. The old gander was only winged ;
and when he found himself overtaken by my man, Eead, he
turned round and made a regular charge at him.”
In the severe winter of 1870-71, Whoopers were unusually
abundant on our coasts. Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., was
informed by a dealer in Leadenhall Market that he had
received as many as a hundred during the frost, mostly
from the neighbourhood of King’s Lynn ; and a poulterer at
Lynn said that he had had thirty. The largest flocks
hitherto reported in the migration schedules are from near
Spurn, where on the 18th of December, 1879, thirty were
seen, all young in the browrn plumage, except one old bird
which was acting as pilot; and at the Dudgeon light-vessel,
on the 24th of November, 1882, fifty, all white, passed to
the westward.
On the coast of Ireland, according to Sir E. Payne-
Gallwey, the Whooper is far less common than its smaller
congener, Bewick’s Swan, and he has seldom met with a
dozen of the former together, whereas the latter are sometimes
in hundreds.
The Whooper visits the Fmroes, and is generally distributed
during the breeding-seasons in Iceland. According to
Eeinhardt, it formerly bred near Godthaab in Greenland;
and as he speaks of having examined specimens from thence,
it is to he presumed that they were correctly identified as
belonging to this species, and not to the American C. buccinator
or C. americanns. It nests in Norway, principally
beyond the Arctic circle, and more abundantly in Swedish
Lapland, Finland, and Northern Eussia ; and across Siberia,
in which its breeding range appears to extend as far south
as the elevated lakes of Mongolia. In winter it visits China,
and is, according to Capt. Blakiston, the commonest species
of Swan in Japan; it is said to have occurred in Nepal;
passes through Turkestan on migration; is abundant
during the severe weather on the southern shores of the
WHOOPER. 311
Caspian ; has been identified by Canon Tristram at Jerusalem
; and visits Lower Egypt, and the lakes of Algeria in
winter. On the Continent, south of its breeding range
already traced, it occurs on migration down to the Mediterranean
and its islands ; being at times very abundant in the
Black Sea and its vicinity.
The late Mr. Dann, in a note to the Author, says, “ The
Wild Swan appears in Lapland with the first breaking up of
the ice, and is the earliest of all the Anatidae in its return
north. They frequent the most secluded and uninhabited
swamps and lakes in the wooded districts, and are found
only in scattered pairs south of Juckasierva; thence in
a north-eastern direction they are reported to be very
numerous, but I did not fall in with any during my stay in
Lapland.” They make a large nest of rushes and coarse
herbage; the egg is of a uniform pale yellowish-white, and
measures about 4*5 by 2*9 in. Incubation commences in
the latter half of May, lasting forty-two days; and Dr.
Palmen states that the young grow so slowly as to be unable
to fly until the end of August, or even later. The food of
this species consists of grasses, woods, and seeds of plants.
Linnseus saw Wild Swans several times during his tour in
Lapland, and mentions that at the residence of the governor
of the province at Calix, he saw three, which, having been
taken when young, were as tame as domestic Geese. Bech-
stein says that in Eussia the Whooper is more frequently
domesticated than the Mute Swan. A pinioned female, in
the possession of Montagu, laid an egg. Some years ago
the Author had an opportunity of seeing ten or twelve
Whoopers in a stable in London. These fine birds had
been procured by Mr. Castang, the well-known dealer in
birds, for the late Earl of Egremont, and the Swans were
shortly afterwards sent to Petworth, where, it was said, they
produced young. At the time the Author saw these birds,
he also heard the voice of one of them, a very old and large
male ; the note resembled the sound of the word “ whoop,
repeated loudly ten or twelve times in succession. At the
Gardens of the Zoological Society a pair of Whoopers bred