TH SWANNERY AT ABBOTSBURY. dll 
Kingdom, the decoy for Ducks must, I should think, be amongst 
the smallest, for what would a Norfolk or Lincoln decoyman say 
to these insignificant results ? 
To revert to the Swans. Though their number is said to be 
sadly diminished, a flock of seven hundred of these noble birds 
is still a goodly colony. Indeed [ know not where else in 
England such a sight may be seen. Lloyd, in his ‘ Scandinavian 
Adventures’ (vol. ii., p. 431), speaking of the Hooper, says that 
astounding numbers sometimes pass the winter off the western 
coast of Sweden, and that Mr. Richard Dann once counted, in 
Kongsbacka fjord alone, upwards of five hundred birds. He adds 
that at the breeding season, when the ice disappears, it is the 
habit of the Hoopers to separate in pairs, and retire to the more 
sequestered of the mountain lakes and morasses.* The same 
graphic writer also gives a very spirited account of the annual 
battue of the Mute Swan, which takes place in Sweden when the 
birds are in moult, and therefore unable to take wing and escape ; 
and he calls attention to the magnificent sight of a thonsand or 
twelve hundred Swans congregate in one spot, when these Swan 
hunts take place, and declares that though at an English battue 
we may “justly pride ourselves on a bouquet or rush of Pheasants, 
yet beautiful a sight as it is to see a hundred or two of these 
splendid birds on the wing at once, the Swans collected at a Swan 
hunt carry away the palm.” Itis this magnificent sight, on a some- 
what smaller scale, and without the butchery and bloodshed, which 
may be enjoyed by the visitor to Abbotsbury. He need not 
journey to Sweden, or to Northern Asia, Eastern Russia, Siberia, . 
or the Caspian Sea, where the true home of the Mute Swan seems 
to lay; but in a retired peaceful estuary on the southern coast of 
England, and within an easy drive of one of our favourite watering- 
places, he may see a Swannery of no mean dimensions, which 
can scarcely fail to interest the least observant. 
* For an accurate account of the breeding of Cygnus musicus and C. Bewickii, 
see Messrs. Seebohm and Harvie Brown on the “ Birds of the Lower Petchora,” 
‘Ibis’ for 1876 (3rd series, vol. vi., pp. 487—441). 
