8o ANIMAL ARTISANS 



of Queen Elizabeth agrees most accurately with 

 modern experience of the visits of the wild swan, 

 since, with one exception, he had no trustworthy 

 record of their being killed in the county before 

 December, and then only when there was an early 

 beginning of frost and snow. All the very severe 

 winters are noted as " great swan years " in Norfolk, 

 and the birds then often stay till as late as March. 

 By that time they are scattered in small flocks round 

 the coast and salt-marshes. But in the first week 

 in March they gather into " herds " and fly straight 

 northwards, passing right across the county in a 

 straight line for that part of the Arctic Circle in 

 which they intend to nest. 



There is something particularly interesting and 

 suggestive both in the appearance and the life of 

 these grave and stately strangers from the hyperborean 

 lands. They are the largest of all the Northern 

 birds, and infinitely the most striking in form and 

 hue. They are among the very few birds of pure 

 white plumage in summer and winter alike. They 

 are absolutely harmless, though possessed of great 

 strength and power of flight ; and they depend for 

 their existence on the fact that they make their nest 

 and rear their young in lands where no man dwells, 

 or where those relentless enemies of animal life, the 

 savage and the semi-savage, are so rarely found 

 that these great, helpless, ground-nesting birds are in 

 a measure free from their molestation. 



It is said that the hooper swans once nested in the 

 Orkneys. But at the present time these, the commonest 



