SPECIES EXTINCT OR EXTIRPATED. 475 



writes that hunters informed him that Swans remained all 

 through the year in the remoter portions of New York State. 

 If this were true they probably were Trumpeters, as the 

 Whistling Swan summered in the far north, David Pieter- 

 zoon De Vries, the Patroon, settled on Staten Island. In April, 

 1639, he went in his sloop to Fort Orange (now Albany), where 

 he arrived April 30, and left on his return May 14. In his 

 account of the trip he states that there were great numbers of 

 Turkeys and water-fowl, such as Swans, Geese, Teal, etc., all 

 along the river. ^ If Swans were seen in numbers upon the 

 river in May, they must have been either non-breeding birds 

 or breeding in that region. All accounts agree that Swans 

 came very early in spring, that the Whistling Swan moved 

 north as fast as the ice broke up, and that only the Trumpeter 

 Swan ever remained to breed in that latitude. 



The Trumpeter has succumbed to incessant persecution in 

 all parts of its range, and its total extinction is now only a 

 matter of years. Persecution drove it from the northern 

 parts of its winter range to the shores of the Gulf of JNIexico; 

 from all the southern portion of its breeding range toward the 

 shores of the Arctic Ocean; and from the Atlantic and Pacific 

 slopes toward the interior. Now it almost has disappeared 

 from the Gulf States. Mr. A. S. Eldredge, who has a ranch at 

 Lampasas, Tex., writes that eighteen years ago there were 

 seventy-five to one hundred Swans there. Not one has been 

 seen for three years.^ 



A Swan seen at any time of the year in most parts of the 

 United States is the signal for every man with a gun to pursue 

 it. The breeding Swans of the United States have been extir- 

 pated, and the bird is hunted, even in its farthest northern 

 haunts, by the natives, who capture it in summer, when it has 

 molted its primaries and is unable to fly. The Swan lives to 



1 Munsell, Joel: Annals of Albany, 1858, Vol. IX, p. 126. 



2 The Trumpeter is disappearing or has disappeared from the Pacific slope as well as from the 

 Atlantic. It was once the prevailing Swan in California and was plentiful in Oregon and Washington. 

 Suckley in 1853-54 saw immense flocks on the Columbia River (Pac. R.R. Surv., Vol. XII, Part 2, 

 p. 249). Newberry also saw them there (Ibid., Vol. VI, Part 4, p. 100). Murphy (1882) states that they 

 were so common on the Columbia that he doubts if one would bring more than fifty or seventy-five 

 cents (Murphy, John Mortimer: American Game Bird Shooting, 1882, p. 231). It is now stated that 

 there is no well-authenticated instance of the recent occurrence of a Trumpeter in the State of Wash- 

 ington (Dawson and Bowles: Birds of Washington, 1909, p. 811). 



