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NESTING OF THE WHOOPER SWAN IN 

 SCOTLAND. 



BY 



AUDREY GORDON, m.b.o.u. 

 On May 21st, 1921, my husband and I went to a certain loch 

 in the West Highlands hoping to photograph a Black-throated 

 Diver whose nest we had located on May 16th. However, 

 to our great disappointment the Diver's eggs had been washed 

 out of the nest during the flood in the night of May I9th-20th. 

 Near a neighbouring island, where man}^ Herons nested 

 on low birch trees, we saw a pair of WTiooper Swans {Cygnus 

 cvgnus) swimming. Suspecting a nest, a search was made, 

 and soon revealed the Swan's nest with four eggs. It was 

 situated on a patch of green grass amid a mass of hummocks 

 of blaeberry and heather and about four yards from the 

 edge of the loch. The nest was composed of dead grasses 

 and weeds and was raised some fifteen inches from the ground- 

 level. A " hide " was constructed among the hummocks 

 and from it a watch was kept on the 22nd and 23rd. 



The Swan always landed at exactly the same place, on a 

 tiny sandy beach, and approached the nest slowly, drying 

 her breast-feathers by rubbing them with her head. While 

 sitting she spent a good deal of time building up the nest by 

 pulling the grasses up and around her, from the base of the 

 nest. Several times she stood up and laboriously turned the 

 great eggs completely over. Once she left the nest to feed, 

 and before doing so carefully covered the eggs with the nesting 

 material. On returning, however, she did not remove the 

 covering, but wriggled it off the eggs with her body. Often 

 she went to sleep on the nest, her long neck lying along her 

 back in tortuous curves. The photograph shows clearly 

 the distinguishing features of the \\T:iooper Swan — the large 

 size, long straight neck held erect and not curved as in the 

 Mute species, and the absence of knob or berry on the bill. 

 Further proof of the identity of the species was given by the 

 hearing of the repeated calling of both birds, a musical call, 

 rather resembling that of the Wigeon. 



The nesting of the Whooper Swan has been reported from 

 a loch in Perthshire, but as far as I am aware the nest 

 portrayed above has never been recorded. However, the 

 stalker informed us that to his knowledge a pair of Swans 

 has nested on this same island in the loch for the past nine 

 years, but he was not aware that they were anything but 

 Mute Swans. I think it probable that similar cases occur 

 in many of the remote lochs of the West Highlands. 



