296 BULLETIN 130, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



records, but he does not include them in the list of specimens to 

 which he refers, as follows : 



Of the great multitudes of trumpeter swans which traversed the central 

 and western portion of north America 60 years ago, there are 16 specimens 

 preserved in museums which have authentic data. These were collected be- 

 tween the years 1856 and 1909. There are besides the type, five other Canadian 

 records, Toronto 1863, Fort Resolution 1860, Lake St. Clair 1878, St. Clair Flats 

 1884, and Manitoba 1887; and one from Wyoming 1856, Idaho 1873, Michigan 

 1875, Wisconsin 1880, Ohio 1880, Oregon 1881, North Dakota 1891, Minnesota 

 1893, Montana 1902, and Mexico 1909. 



Nesting.— Fvoi. Wells W. Cooke (1906) says: 



In early times it probably bred south to Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, 

 Montana, and Idaho ; it nested in Iowa as late as 1871, in Idaho in 1877, in 

 Minnesota in 1886, and in North Dakota probably for a few years later. It is 

 not probable that at the present time the trumpeter nests anywhere in the 

 United States, and even in Alberta no nests seem to have been found later than 

 1891. The vast wilderness of but a generation ago is now crossed by 

 railroads and thickly dotted with farms. The species is supposed still to breed 

 in the interior of British Columbia at about latitude 53°. 



Dr. R. M. Anderson (1907) writes: 



The only definite record of the nesting of the trumpeter swan in Iowa which 

 I have been able to trace was received from the veteran collector, J. W. 

 Preston, in a letter dated March 22, 1904 : "A pair of ' trumpeters ' reared a 

 brood of young in a slough near Little Twin Lakes, Hancock County, in the 

 season of 1883, not many miles from where some good finds in the way of sets 

 of whooping cranes were made. This was positively Olor buccinator. The 

 nest was placed on a large tussock in a marshy slough or creek, and had been 

 used for years by the swans, as I was credibly informed ; but the nest men- 

 tioned above, so far as I am aware, was the last in that locality." 



Eoderick MacFarlane (1891) reported: 



Several nests of this species were met with in the Barren Grounds, on islands 

 in Franklin Bay, and one containing 6 eggs was situated near the beach on 

 a sloping knoll. It was composed of a quantity of hay, down, and feathers 

 intermixed, and this was the general mode of structure of the nests of both 

 swans. It usually lays from 4 to 6 eggs, judging from the noted contents 

 of a received total of 24 nests. 



Mr. Cameron says that trumpeter swans formerly bred in western 

 Montana, but his diligent investigations have failed to discover 

 any recent nesting sites. " Some birds made great nests of tules, 

 but many more built them on muskrat houses which they flattened 

 out for the purpose." He describes a nest, found in 1871 on the 

 Thompson River, on " a large deserted beaver lodge. On this 

 mound, which measured at least 5 feet across, was a great pile of 

 grass and feathers." The two eggs, which it contained, were 

 concealed under a bunch of down. Of the latest two obtainable 

 records he says: 



