160 WILD LIFE AND THE CAMERA 



high, and made of sticks, weeds, and rubbish. 

 As Avith so many of the water birds, the swans 

 protect their eggs with a covering of down 

 scratched from their own breasts, so that, when 

 the birds leave the nest, the two to six large, 

 yellomsh eggs are hidden from the eyes of possible 

 thieves, and protected against any sudden changes 

 of temperature. 



It is many years before the swans are clothed in 

 the feathers of immaculate whiteness which make 

 them such conspicuous objects of beauty. Not 

 indeed until the fifth year does all trace of grey 

 disappear. Their first feathers are entirely grey ; 

 gradually they lighten, becoming mottled with 

 white, the neck and head remaining grey until 

 after the body is completely white. The bill, 

 so conspicuously black in the mature bird, goes 

 through many changes, being almost white the 

 second year, the black appearing a year later. In 

 the common American or " whistling " swan there 

 is a small oblong spot of bright yellow on the 

 naked skin just forward of and below the eye, 

 whereas the " trumpeter " or Western species is 

 entirely black from the eye to the tip of the biU. 



Neither of these varieties is the swan of the 

 poets or garden ponds. These are a European 

 species which are even more graceful than our 

 wild ones. Perhaps the most conspicuous dififer- 

 ence in the appearance of the two birds is in the 

 form of the neck, which the American swan holds 

 straight instead of in the graceful curve so notice- 

 able in the tame bird. 



It is impossible for one who has seen only the 



