428 

 WHOOPER SWAN. 



Cygnus music us (Bechstein). 



Winter visitant, irregular in numbers, which vary with the season. 

 In severe weather large flocks occur. 



Probably the earliest Yorkshire mention of the Whooper 

 is in Fothergill's " British Ornithology " (1799, p. 10), where 

 it is stated that " one or two were shot in the winter of 1798 

 near York." 



Thomas Allis, in 1844, wrote : 



Cygnus ferus. Wild Swan Shot near Doncaster in hard winters ; 

 rare near Sheffield ; Dr. Farrar obtained one specimen in the severe 

 winter of 1829, at Storrs Mill, near Barnsley ; several others were seen 

 but escaped ; occasionally met with about Leeds, also on the moors 

 near Huddersfield ; about Sutton-on-Derwent they are, in severe 

 winters, occasionally abundant. I have heard of a flock of fifty being 

 seen there ; I have had a dozen through my hands in a single season, 

 and have known upwards of twenty in a week exposed for sale in York. 



This royal fowl is never altogether absent in any winter, 

 though its numbers vary considerably in different years ; 

 it usually makes its appearance in severe weather, more 

 frequently in January and February than at any other period, 

 when frost and snow drive it from its resorts on the European 

 Continent. The earliest date on which I have noted it at 

 the Teesmouth is igth October 1876, when a small flock of 

 six was seen, from which one was obtained. 



In some winters it is very numerous, such being the case 

 in 1829 ; in 1838 ; in 1865, on the Humber (when as many 

 as a hundred were offered for sale one market day in York) ; 

 in 1871 in East Yorkshire ; and in 1894-95, when several were 

 captured in a starved condition. In the winter of 1880 an 

 immense herd passed the Teesmouth flying in a north- 

 westerly direction ; when the leading birds arrived on the 

 Greatham shore, the rearmost portion of the herd was still 

 at the Yorkshire side of the estuary, and it was computed 

 at a rough calculation that the flight must have consisted 

 of at least a thousand birds. 



