88 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs. 



day and night, far oiit at sea. This weed is rapidly disappearing everywhere on 

 the Essex coast, and the Geese are getting less and less feeding ground each year. 



Brent Geese leave for their northern breeding quarters about the middle of 

 April ; I have known them off the coast as late as the middle of May. They are 

 paired at the time of leaving, and the females may be distinguished in a flock by 

 their somewhat lighter appearance. 



Professor Robert CoUett (" Bird Life in Arctic Norway," Mr. Cocks' trans- 

 lation) says : — " in the spring. Brent Geese push in under the Naze (Lindesnas) 

 on a fixed day, towards the end of May, in large skeins, and more follow on the 

 succeeding days ; in rows as straight as a line, they sweep compactly over the 

 surface of the sea, along the whole coast, until they reach the outermost north- 

 westerly skerries. Then the crowds sweep further afield, so as to fetch their 

 nesting places in Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya; and the sealers and Arctic 

 travellers, who have stood upon the northern point of Spitsbergen, have seen 

 them wandering yet further over the snowy sea, seeking still more northerly 

 archipelagoes, which as yet no human being has trodden." 



This is the great home-going, a collective movement of great masses of birds, 

 impelled hy a common impulse, which, notwithstanding all modem research, remains 

 the most wonderful phenomenon and enigma in nature. 



Family— ANA TID^. 



Whooper Swan. 



Cygnus musicus, BechsT. 



THIS grand and noble bird is a regular winter visitor to some part or other 

 of the British Islands wherever it can obtain security and food. In severe 

 seasons it is often very numerous. 



Its summer or breeding range extends across Europe and Asia, and, as a 

 rule, north of the Arctic circle. It is the earliest of the Arctic breeding birds to 

 move towards its nesting quarters, and its loud trumpet-calls are the first' notice 



