Bewick's Swan. 55 



along our stream at daybreak, on January 17th, I was greatly pleased to make 

 acquaintance with a small herd, presumably of this species, and at very close 

 quarters, at a spot where the beck makes a sharp turn at the corner of a 

 wood, and when I was crossing the angle of the wood through the bushes, just 

 before reaching the other side, seven or eight Swans, flying altogether in a body 

 and very low down, passed me, following the course of the stream, and certainly 

 within fifteen yards of where I stood. Their size was one third less than the 

 Whooper ; plumage a most brilliant white, like snow with the frost-sparkle on it, 

 and, in beautiful contrast, jet black feet and legs, relieved against the unsullied 

 white of flank and belly, I think I must have heard their notes two minutes 

 before seeing them ; it resembled some plough-boy playing a jews' -harp, which, 

 indeed, I thought it was, or the single twang of a great harp string. So near did 

 they pass that I could see the creases and wrinkles on their feet and legs — lovely 

 creatures to look upon so closely. I felt pleased afterwards that I had just before 

 taken the cartridges out of hiy gun,, to jump a drain, and had not replaced them." 



The food of this Swan is much the same as the rest of the genus, a purely 

 vegetable diet. Air. J. H. Gurney found in the gizzard of one shot at Hampstead 

 decoy pond, in Norfolk, silt, pond-grass, water insects' legs, and the tail of a 

 small fish. 



Mr. St. John (" Nat. Hist, and Sport in Moray," p. 72) remarks that they 

 " usually come in small companies with the Whooper. I never see above eight of 

 the Cygnus bewicki together, usually only four or five. They are easily distin- 

 guished, being shorter and more compact looking birds. They also swim rather 

 higher in the water, and are much tamer. Until they have been shot at and 

 frightened, it is easy to approach them. Their plumage is peculiarly white; and 

 the young apparently are not of the same blue-grey as those of Cygnus ferus. I 

 can assert this as a fact : but I never saw one of the Bewick's Swans that was 

 not of a pure and snow-like whiteness." 



In Ireland, Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey considers the Whooper or Great Swan 

 far rarer than Bewick's, he has seldom seen more than a dozen Whoopers together, 

 but of the latter thirty to fifty in a herd are not uncommon on the estuaries and 

 lakes near the coast; their numbers in any locality are greatly influenced by 

 weather. A good resort for these Swans is the small lakes at Castle Gregory, on 

 the coast of Kerry, here as many as two thotisand have been seen at one time. 



The convolutions and anatomical structure of the trachea in this species difier 

 in a marked degree from the same in the Whooper Swan, and in cases ol doubt 

 which might arise in the proper identification of the two species, dissection of 

 these parts would at once settle the question. 



