Whooper. 469 



waters, so that it is difficult to say whether the Wiltshire killed 

 specimens were mere tourists on their travels come to visit , this 

 inhospitable country of their own free will, or whether they were 

 escaped convicts, involuntarily transported to these shores. In 

 either case their reception was a warm one. Mr. Grant records 

 another specimen killed at Enford Manor Farm in September, 

 1870. This bird has obtained the trivial name of ' Cravat ' 

 Goose, from the conspicuous patch of white feathers on the chin 

 and throat, almost encircling the black neck, which bears a 

 certain resemblance to a neckcloth. These birds are the 

 ' bustards,' les outardes, of the Canadians. 



183. WHOOPER (Cygnus musicus). 



More commonly known as the Wild Swan, and is an annual 

 visitor to our coasts in winter. Indeed, I have seen nine brought 

 in to the Lynn poulterers by a single gunner in a morning in 

 severe weather. It is a bird of very powerful flight, which 

 travels at a great height above the earth and in a straight line, 

 and its speed is said sometimes to exceed a hundred miles in an 

 hour ; so no wonder it is wont to appear at times on most of our 

 larger inland lakes and rivers. The late Rev. George Marsh 

 reported that a dozen of them settled on the Draycot Pond in 

 1838, which was one of the hardest winters within the memory 

 of living man. He also recorded that one was brought to Lord 

 Radnor at Salisbury, who offered a guinea if the man would get 

 him another. The worthy fowler soon returned with one of his 

 lordship's tame Swans, and received the guinea, and neither he 

 nor the noble earl was aware of any difference between the two 

 birds. The Rev. A. P. Morres records the sudden appearance of 

 a small party of four Whoopers as Mr. Attwater, a farmer of 

 Britford, and the keeper Butler were resting under a tree after a 

 successful day's duck-shooting. These fine birds, after circling 

 round for a while, pitched in the Britford meadows on the brink 

 of the river at no great distance, when two of their number were 

 then and there shot. On February 9th, 1877, Mr. Nelson 

 Goddard, of the Manor House, Clyffe Pypard, my much-valued 



