242 Tue Birps AxsouTt US. 
The two swans that are found in the United States 
are migratory. The Trumpeter Swan is the Western 
species, found “ chiefly from the Mississippi Valley, 
and northward, to the Pacific, Hudson’s Bay, Canada. 
Casually on the Atlantic coast. Breeds from Iowa 
and Dakota northward. In winter, south to the 
Gulf.” (Coues.) As the common descriptive name 
indicates, these birds have a loud cry or trumpet-call 
that is even said to be “ startling,” so strange and 
unbirdlike is its character. Hearne, Nuttall quotes to 
the effect that he had heard them “ in serene evenings 
after sunset make a noise not very unlike that of a 
French horn, but entirely divested of every note that 
constituted melody.” Dr. Newberry, in the “ Pacific 
Railroad Reports” (1857), says,— 
“The Trumpeter Swan visits California with its congeners, the 
Ducks and Geese, in their annual migrations, but, compared with the 
myriads of other water-birds which congregate at that season in the 
bays and rivers of the West, it is always rare; . . . frequently, while 
at Fort Vancouver, their trumpeting drew our attention to the long 
converging lines of these magnificent birds, so large and so snowy 
white as they came from their northern nesting-places, and, scream- 
ing their delight at the appearance of the broad expanse of water, 
perhaps their winter home, descended into the Columbia.” 
The Whistling Swan is the Eastern species, although 
it winters on the Pacific coast, and it comes trooping 
southward in October, or later, and passes southward 
until it reaches the Chesapeake, where many tarry, 
but many more go farther south. It is only occa- 
sionally that a swan is seen on the Delaware, but in 
Peter Kalm’s time and up to 1800 the bird was not 
uncommon as far north as the tide-water portion of 
