234 BRITISH BIRDS 



Whooper Swan. 

 Cygnus musicus. 



Beak : anterior part depressed and black, basal part quadrangular 

 and lemon-colour ; plumage white ; legs and feet black. Length, 

 sixty inches ; weight, about twenty-four pounds. 



The whooper, also called the wild swan and the whistling swan, 

 is a not uncommon visitor to our coasts in winter, and a little over 

 a century ago had a breeding-station in the Orkneys. It is very 

 closely related to the mute swan, but it ranges very much farther 

 north in summer, its breeding-grounds being north of the arctic 

 circle. The nest is bulky, composed of sedge and coarse herbage, 

 and the eggs are four or five in number, and white. Seebohm, who 

 observed its habits in its breeding-grounds, says : ' The whooper is 

 a ten times handsomer bird than a tame swan in the eyes of an 

 ornithologist, but is not really so graceful its neck is shorter, and 

 its scapulars are not so plume -like. Instead of sailing about with its 

 long neck curved in the shape of the letter S, bent back almost to 

 the fluffed-up scapulars, the whooper seemed intent on feeding with 

 his head and neck under water.' He compares the notes of the 

 whooper to a bass trombone ; but the notes are short three or four 

 trumpet-blasts, keeping time with the upward and downward beat 

 of the wings. He adds : ' The extermination of the whooper in so 

 many of its breeding-places has arisen from the unfortunate habit, 

 which it evidently acquired years ago, before men came upon the 

 scene a habit which it shares with the goose. Most birds moult 

 their quills slowly, in pairs, so that they are only slightly inconve- 

 nienced by the operation, and never without quills enough to enable 

 them to fly. Swans and geese, on the other hand, drop nearly all 

 their flight-feathers at once, and for a week or two, before the new 

 feathers have grown, are quite unable to fly. In some localities 

 the whoopers have had the misfortune to breed where the natives 

 have been clever enough to surround them at the critical period of 

 their lives, and stupid enough to avail themselves of the opportunity 

 thus afforded of killing the geese that laid the golden eggs.' 



Bewick's swan (Cygnus Bewickii), named by Yarrell after 

 Thomas Bewick, author of a well-known ' History of British Birds,' 



