310 ANATID^. 



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, Read, 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 brown 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 R. 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 some- 

 times in hundreds. 



The Whooper visits the Faeroes, and is generally distri- 

 buted during the breeding-seasons in Iceland. According to 

 Reinhardt, it formerly bred near Godthaab in Greenland ; 

 and as he speaks of having examined specimens from thence, 

 it is to be presumed that they were correctly identified as 

 belonging to this species, and not to the American C. buc- 

 cinator or C. americmws. It nests in Norway, principally 

 beyond the Arctic circle, and more abundantly in Swedish 

 Lapland, Finland, and Northern Russia; 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 



