TRUMPETER SWAN 



77 



TRUMPETER SWAN 



Cygnus buccinator 

 (sig-nus, buk-si-na-tor) 



Colour Plate No. 1. 



SCIENTIFIC NAME 



Cygnus, Latin, meaning a swan, and buccinator, meaning a trumpeter. 



COLLOQUIAL NAMES 



IN GENERAL USE: Swan; wild swan. IN LOCAL USE: Bugler; cygne (swan). 



DESCRIPTION 



ADULTS, BOTH SEXES. Entire plumage white; head, neck and under surface, 

 often stained rusty from certain waters. 

 Eye, brown; feet, black; bill, black, with 

 narrow salmon-red streak on edge of man- 

 dibles, lacking in Whistling Swan; the naked 

 area, between eye and base of bill, lores, 

 never with yellow spot as in Whistling 

 Swan; bill, somewhat longer and broader 

 at tip than in that species; nostril, usually 

 further from tip of bill than in Whistling 

 Swan, the hind margin of nostril being 

 more than 2.5 inches from tip of bill. 

 Four outer primaries emarginate for several 

 inches at tips. 



JUVENILE. In first winter general 

 colour, greyish white, slightly tinged with 

 yellow. Upper part of head and cheeks 

 light, reddish brown; feet, dull yellowish 



FIG. 39. Bill of Trumpeter Swan 



brown, tinged with olive; bill, black, with middle portion of ridge, light flesh colour; 

 edge of lower mandible, dull flesh colour. (Young Trumpeters have much yellow 

 on the feet which voung Whistlers never have.) 

 SPECIMEN IDENTIFICATION AND FIELD MARKS 



See Whistling Swan. 



LIFE STORY 



The magnificent Trumpeter Swan, "the largest of all the North 

 American wildfowl, belongs to a vanishing race; though once common 

 throughout all of the central and northern portions of the continent, it 

 has been gradually receding before the advance of civilization and ag- 

 riculture; when the great Central West was wild and uncultivated it 

 was known to breed in the uninhabited parts of many of our Central 

 States, even as far south as northern Missouri; but now it probably does 

 not breed anywhere within the limits of the United States, except pos- 

 sibly in some of the wilder portions of Montana or Wyoming; civilization 

 has pushed it farther and farther north until now it is making its last 

 stand in the uninhabited wilds of northern Canada" (Bent, 1925). 



The history of its disappearance is summed up by Forbush (1912) 

 as follows: "The Trumpeter has succumbed to incessant persecution in 

 all parts of its range, and its total extinction is now only a matter of 

 years. Persecution drove it from the northern parts of its winter range 



