9 BRITISH BIRDS. WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



According to Naumann, incubation lasts five weeks ; the cygnets are very slow 

 in growing, and are not able to fly before the end of August or September. 



Swans feed on vegetable substances, as grass, and shoots of shrubs and trees, 

 and the roots and leaves of water plants, which their long necks enable them to 

 tear up from the bottom of the rivers, and shallows of the lakes they frequent. 

 They will also eat grain when it can be got. The wild Swan when swimming 

 carries its neck straight and erect, on the contrary the tame Swan usually has it 

 gracefully curved, a difference which the naturalist Pennant remarked upon more 

 than a century since. One unfailing distinction between the two is in the bill. 

 In Cygnus nmsicus, this has the basal part, to below the nostrils, and some distance 

 along the lateral margin of the upper mandible, yellow, the rest black. In C. olor, 

 the bill is reddish-orange, with the base and lores black, also a prominent black 

 tubercle, in adiilts, above the nostrils. The colours are thus reversed. 



Mr. H. J. and C. E. Pearson ("The Ibis," 1893, p, 243) say, in Iceland, "this 

 was the only species of Swan we observed. Eggs were taken on June aoth and 

 28th, but the weather among the hills had been so bad this spring, that several 

 pairs were only commencing to prepare their nests about the latter date. We 

 afterwards saw a clutch of seven eggs which had been recently taken. Although 

 these birds sometimes breed on islands in the inhabited districts, it is little use 

 to look for their eggs before you pass the last farm, as they are generally taken 

 to eat or sell." 



Saxby (" Birds of Shetland ") says : " sometimes, though very rarely, the 

 Swans return northwards as early as the end of February, but the usual time is 

 during the months of March and April. The flocks which arrive in spring are 

 much smaller than those which pass southwards in autumn, * * * in spring, 

 the greater number arrive late in the evening, or very early in the morning, when 

 there is little stirring below ; whereas in autumn, they most frequently pass over 

 in broad daylight, when the people are gathering in their harvest * * * *. 

 During flight they utter a soft, rather melancholy cry, resembling the words who- 

 who-iv/w, repeated many times in succession ; on a calm spring evening, about 

 twilight, or as the Shetlanders say ' in the dim,' these sounds have a strange- 

 one might almost say, a solemn effect." 



There is no sound in nature more likely to attract attention than the aerial 

 music of a herd of migrating Swans passing high over-head ; some speak of it as 

 exhilarating to the highest degree, but to me there is always a touch of sadness 

 in the sound the sadness of Highland music in those long drawn, melancholy, 

 and plaintive notes, which seem suggestive of the illimitable wilds of the great 

 lone-lands where the birds have passed the long day of the short Arctic summer. 



