50 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



in number, endeavoured to take their heads in line ; his 

 gun, however, missed fire, but quickly recocking it, he 

 succeeded in killing one and winging another as they 

 rose. The latter falling on the opposite side of the 

 water walked off over the meadows and into a lane 

 adjoining, where it was captured by a man who sold it 

 in Norwich Market. 



The river about Sparham and Lyng Eastaugh, as 

 Mr. F. Norgate informs me, is another favourite locality, 

 and through his kindness I have now before me the 

 heads of two old and three young whoopers, killed in 

 that neighbourhood, on the 31st of December, 1869, 

 and the 1st of January, 1870 ; also the head of an adult 

 whooper with a very long bill, shot at Sparham on the 

 13th of February, 1871, which weighed eighteen and 

 a half pounds. Of the first five, most probably a family 

 group, the old birds weighed twenty-two pounds and 

 fourteen pounds, and the cygnets sixteen pounds, fifteen 

 pounds, and fourteen pounds respectively. The latter 

 Mr. Norgate describes from notes taken at the time, 

 as" white with a few greyish-brown feathers on the 

 wings and head, feet black, but the webs mottled nearly 

 all over with white; bills white and black instead of 

 yellow and black as in adults." Besides the greyish- 

 brown feathers on the heads of these cygnets (with the 

 least possible tinge of red here and there), their imma- 

 ture state is marked by the loral space between the 

 beak and the eye, which is bare in old birds, being more 

 or less covered with minute feathers, the same extend- 

 ing down the ridge of the upper mandible nearly an inch 

 beyond the ordinary limit of the frontal feathers in 

 adults ; but it is noticeable that even in very old 

 whoopers, the feathers of the forehead extend slightly 

 beyond the true base* of the upper mandible. The 



* See also remarks on an "Anatomical peculiarity of the 

 hooper's beak," by F. Boyes and W. W. Boulton. " Zoologist," 

 1871, p. 2504. 



