WHOOPER SWAN. I 5 



occasionally wanders westward. Half a dozen or so of the 

 reported occurrences of the bird in England are supposed to 

 be due to genuine migration, but others are either errors or 

 may be due to wandering from private waters. The showy 

 bird appears on mural paintings in Egypt. This goose is 

 sociable and a vegetarian ; it has been shot when consorting 

 with both Brents and Barnacles. The upper parts are black, 

 and the sides of the face and neck and the breast are rich 

 chestnut bordered with white. There is a large white patch at 

 the base of the bill, separated from the cheeks by a black line 

 which passes through the eye from the crown to the chin. The 

 belly is black, the flanks and tail-coverts are white. The short 

 bill, legs, and irides are dark brown. The immature bird has 

 less rufous on the face. Length, 21 ins. Wing, I4'5 ins. 

 Tarsus, 2 ins. 



Whooper Swan. Cyg?ms cygnus (Linn.). 



Three swans are on the British list, but two only, both 

 winter visitors, can be counted as really wild. The Whooper, 

 or Hooper (Plate 9), breeds in northern Europe and Asia and 

 ill Iceland, and winters in Europe, central Asia, and occasionally 

 north Africa. It is frequent in Scotland and occurs round our 

 coasts, though much rarer in Ireland than the smaller Bewick's 

 Swan. 



Size, when there is no chance for comparison, is insufficient 

 as a means of identification in the field, and there is little 

 difference between the Whooper and Mute. The best character 

 is the beak. In the Mute this is black at the base, where 

 there is also a prominent knob or tubercle ; the rest, except 

 for a black line along the cutting edge, is orange ; the black 

 reaches to the eye. In both Whooper and Bewick's the 

 pattern is reversed and the lemon-yellow extends from the «ye 

 to the nostril ; in the former, however, the patch is larger and 



