242 THE BIRDS ABOUT Us. 



The two swans that are found in the United States 

 are migratory. The Trumpeter Swan is the Western 

 species, found " chiefly from the Mississippi Valley, 

 and northward, to the Pacific, Hudson's Bay, Canada. 

 Casually on the Atlantic coast. Breeds from Iowa 

 and Dakota northward. In winter, south to the 

 Gulf." (Coues.) As the common descriptive name 

 indicates, these birds have a loud cry or trumpet-call 

 that is even said to be " startling," so strange and 

 unbirdlike is its character. Hearne, Nuttall quotes to 

 the effect that he had heard them " in serene evenings 

 after sunset make a noise not very unlike that of a 

 French horn, but entirely divested of every note that 

 constituted melody." Dr. Newberry, in the " Pacific 

 Railroad Reports" (1857), says, 



" The Trumpeter Swan visits California with its congeners, the 

 Ducks and Geese, in their annual migrations, but, compared with the 

 myriads of other water-birds which congregate at that season in the 

 bays and rivers of the West, it is always rare ; . . . frequently, while 

 at Fort Vancouver, their trumpeting drew our attention to the long 

 converging lines of these magnificent birds, so large and so snowy 

 white as they came from their northern nesting-places, and, scream- 

 ing their delight at the appearance of the broad expanse of water, 

 perhaps their winter home, descended into the Columbia." 



The Whistling Swan is the Eastern species, although 

 it winters on the Pacific coast, and it comes trooping 

 southward in October, or later, and passes southward 

 until it reaches the Chesapeake, where many tarry, 

 but many more go farther south. It is only occa- 

 sionally that a swan is seen on the Delaware, but in 

 Peter Kalm's time and up to 1800 the bird was not 

 uncommon as far north as the tide-water portion of 



