154 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



Whooper dimng its winter visits to our Islands, my 

 readers will perhaps forgive me for summarizing here 

 the details that I find given on this part of its history 

 in the 4th edition of Yarrell's ' British Birds.' I 

 gather that although a few pairs of this species 

 formerly bred in the Orkney Isles, they have long 

 ceased to do so, but that these islands are still 

 annually frequented in autumn by large numbers of 

 Swans, that our eastern and western coasts are pretty 

 regularly visited by these birds, their numbers 

 depending principally upon the severity of the 

 weather, that they usually adopt the same sort of 

 formation in flying as Wild Geese, that they are not 

 particularly difficult of approach till they have been 

 persecuted, that on the bays and estuaries of our 

 southern coast they have of late years become com- 

 paratively scarce, and that, in Ireland, Bewick's Swan 

 is more common than the Whooper. The note of 

 this species consists of a loud single note frequently 

 repeated ; to my ears it much resembles the sound 

 first elicited from a bugle by persons unacquainted 

 with that instrument ; but the Swan's notes, when 

 produced in chorus by a flock, are by no means 

 unmusical. Mr. Hunt, who shot some Whoopers in 

 Orkney in March 1881, assured me that he found 

 their flesh excellent, but on this particular point I 

 am unable to speak from personal experience. 



In the mouths of January, February, and March, 

 1893, the valley of the Nen, in the neighbourhood of 

 Lilford, was haunted by a considerable number of 

 Wild Swans, and numerous reports of their appearance 

 reached me. As I have given full details of these 

 occurrences in the 'Zoologist' of 1893, I will only 

 here state that I am convinced that we were visited 



