SWANS 215 



loves a " hard " covered with weed. There, too, in the lily- 

 flowered pulk-hole, you may, if you chase the mother, see 

 her sink her body into the water, and take her young on her 

 back, sailing off in trepidation, whilst the cock comes with 

 a flourish towards you. But never mind him, unless you 

 fall into the water, when he would master you surely. I 

 know one old cock who killed a big retriever easily in the 

 water, and a man would fare no better if he had nothing to 

 defend himself For the cock will fight for his young — he is 

 very fond of the fluffy birds — and you may see both of them 

 pulling hair-weed and gladen roots from the bottom and 

 feeding them. The young, too, catch flies on the water 

 and eat them ; and both eat fish spawn — there is no ques- 

 tion of that, though the old birds will never take fish from 

 hooks, like the great crested grebe. 



At the end of a year these young will be able to fly, when 

 two years old they will be white with swansdown, and at 

 three they commence to breed. 



In hard winters they are hard set in the wakes, and are 

 often fed by keepers. For though many are only marked by 

 having their webs punched with a wadding-cutter or slit with 

 a knife, they are considered private unless they can fly, when 

 the fenmen count them as fair game ; and many a shock- 

 headed fenman sleeps soundly upon swansdown, and at times 

 feasts sumptuously upon cygnet — a dish, I confess, to me 

 no better than poor, ill-fed venison, which it resembles in 

 flavour. 



The mute swan is the largest of the family, and next 

 comes the whooper, and lastly Bewick's swan. 



The whooper, with his wild trumpetings, comes but 

 rarely to the Norfolk coast, and only in such weather as 

 leaves him a mere bag of feathers and bones ; but the small 

 swan of Bewick is common — wedge-shaped flocks of five to 

 ten coming across the frigid seas in a sharp winter, and 

 dropping with a yap-yap-yap from high in the sky into the 

 sluggish waters of the Broads — one gunner in 1890 killed 



