248 - ALLEN'S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 



Nestling. Clothed with white down. 



Characters. There is no knob at the base of the bill, which 

 has nearly the basal half yellow ; the black terminal portion 

 not extending above the nostrils, and only reaching laterally 

 half-way to the gape. Culmen, 4*2 inches. 



Range in Great Britain. The Whooper or Whistling Swan, as 

 this species is variously called, is a bird of passage, or a winter 

 visitor, arriving on the coasts and islands of Northern Britain 

 in November, and remaining till the spring, sometimes as late 

 as May. Hard weather will bring the Swans south, and they 

 may then be found on the southern coasts, or even on large 

 sheets of inland waters. In Ireland they are said to be far less 

 plentiful than Bewick's Swan. 



Range outside the British Islands. The Whooper breeds in 

 high northern latitudes from Iceland eastwards throughout 

 Northern Europe and Siberia, wandering south in winter to 

 most of the Mediterranean countries, as well as to Central 

 Asia, the Japanese Islands, and China. In Norway it is only 

 found nesting above the Arctic Circle, but in Sweden and in 

 Northern Russia it is found as low as 62 N. lat. 



Habits. Mr. Seebohm gives the following excellent account 

 of the habits of the Wild Swan : " When Harvie-Brown and 

 I were in the valley of the Petchora, waiting at Ust Zylma, a 

 little south of the Arctic Circle, for summer to come, one of 

 the first warnings that we had of the approaching break-up of 

 the winter was the arrival of the Swans. At first they arrived 

 in pairs. The earliest date was on the nth of May; every 

 day the numbers passing over increased, and occasionally we 

 saw them on the snow or on the ice ; until on the 2oth, when 

 the ice on the river broke up, the last Swan appeared to have 

 passed us, and we saw no more of them, until we arrived at 

 their breeding-grounds. A month later, when we had reached 

 the tundra, where a few small birches and willows was all that 

 was left of forest-growth, we came upon the breeding-ground of 

 the Swans in the delta of the Petchora. We found several 

 nests between the iQth and 3oih of June. The Whooper is a 

 very shy bird. We never got a chance of a shot, except once 

 or twice from a boat. We saw very little of it on the tundra, 



