AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. 151 



at Lilford. The Canada Goose {Bernicla canadensis)^ 

 the Egyptian Goose [Chenalopex cegyptiaca), and the 

 Black-backed Tree-Goose [Sarcidiornis melanonota) 

 have all occurred to my knowledge in the neighbour- 

 hood of Lilford, without any signs of having been in 

 captivity, but were all of course waifs and strays from 

 some private owner's domains ; the first-named of 

 the three, however, breeds and thrives so well in 

 a state of semi-captivity that it is almost as much 

 entitled to a place in the British list as the Eed- 

 legged Partridge. 



177. WHOOPER, WILD SWAN, 

 WHISTLING SWAN. 



Cygnus musicus. 



I have a large number of records and reports of 

 the occurrence of ' Wild Swans ' in our county, but 

 must confess that I never handled or saw one of the 

 present species that was said to have met its death 

 in Northamptonshire, and although I am quite 

 prepared to prove that the W hooper has appeared 

 of its own will on several occasions in our district, 

 I am convinced that a majority of the reports 

 of Swans that have reached me refer really to 

 wandering specimens of the so-called ' Tame,' more 

 properly ' Mute ' Swan, Cygnus olor. A tenant 

 farmer on our property near Aldwincle, who died 

 about 1871, at nearly 80 years of age, and had 

 always been a very keen pursuer of wildfowl, recorded 

 in a note-book that he had killed several Wild Swans 

 on a sheet of water known at the time as the Weer 

 Pond ; this fact, if indeed it is a fact, was communi- 



