Mar., 1920 FROM FIELD AND STUDY , 
NI 
NI 
varia). The bird was observed continuously from 8:45 to 9:30 a. M., at a distance of from 
six to thirty feet. The entire time was spent hunting over the bark of the larger limbs 
and trunk of a live oak. At the end of the forty-five minutes it flew to another oak 
about one hundred feet away. Mr. Ralph Hoffman also saw the bird and can vouch for 
my identification.—H. C. HENpERSON, Carpinteria, California, January 27, 1920. 
A Swan Hunt.—Hunters reported that Whistling Swans (Olor columbianus) were 
coming in on the Sweetwater Reservoir again. A few were there last winter. Mr. Toms 
arranged with the caretaker to take us out to try to get a specimen to mount for the 
Natural History Museum, and we drove out to the reservoir December 10, 1919. The 
reservoir at its present stage is about a quarter of a mile wide and a mile and a half 
long. We first saw three swans standing on the shore. The field glasses showed that 
they were all young of the year so we passed on. Half a mile farther on were two 
bunches, five and six respectively, some of each bunch being adult. The five were on 
shore at the head of a bay and appeared to offer the best chance for a shot. They flushed 
before we got into the bay and passed by at such long range that we failed to reach them. 
All the swans in the reservoir promptly left for San Diego Bay and we turned back for 
the landing at the dam. On the way we looked over the ducks in sight to see if there 
were any not represented in the Museum’s collection, but saw nothing I wanted except 
two Canvasbacks, which we collected. 
On arrival] at the landing the caretaker’s helper asked if we had seen the flock 
of twenty-three swans that had just passed over, going up the reservoir. We had been 
so busy looking at the ducks that we had not seen the swans pass high overhead, so we 
ate our lunch and started after them. We found them swimming about on the upper 
part of the reservoir. The caretaker landed Mr. Toms and me on a rocky point where a 
few square yards of tules grew at the edge of the water, and then rowed across the reser- 
voir and up the far side in an attempt to get around the swans and drive them to us. 
They flushed and flew past out of range, and lit again a quarter of a mile down the 
lake. The caretaker succeeded in getting past them this time and turned the flock to- 
ward us. He worked very slowly and at one time the whole bunch stopped swimming 
and went to sleep, heads down, but a slight advance of the boat awoke them and started 
them swimming toward us. Occasionally we could hear a low goose-like honk. I have 
never heard of this talking habit. The actions in general were very like those of geese. 
The swans were too suspicious to come close to the tules but swam past in line at long 
range. We fired with buckshot and got one. It was not fully mature but was a very 
nice bird. Weight fourteen and a half pounds, in rather thin flesh. The stomach was 
full of large seeds or small bulbs with sprouts half an inch to an inch long. Mr. Toms 
suggested that they might be grains of rice eaten in the Sacramento Valley and not vet 
digested, but the grains looked too large for rice. Later, these “grains” were identified 
at the California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, as tubers of sago pondweed (Potamoge- 
ton pectinatus), an abundant freshwater plant in most marshes of California. 
A female Wood Duck (Aix sponsa) came to decoys on the Lower Otay Reservoir. 
San Diego County, December 7, 1919. The hunter did not know what it was and brought 
it to us—FRANK STEPHENS, San Diego, California, December 20, 1919. 
A Large Flock of Swans Wintering at Santa Barbara.—In the middle of November, 
about a dozen Whistling Swans (Olor columbianus) were observed on a small pond on 
the Hone Ranch in Santa Barbara. On December 24 their number had increased to forty- 
four. The pond is protected and is the resort for hundreds of water-fowl.—Ratpu Horr- 
MANN, Santa Barbara, California, December 29, 1919. 
Is the Swan Increasing in Numbers ?— Whistling Swans (Olor columbianus) may be 
seen during the winter in flocks of considerable size at suitable spots in the central part 
of the state, but there are few places in the more southern sections where they are now 
considered at all common. Small flocks are sometimes encountered where the sur- 
roundings are congenial, and slightly larger ones linger for short periods at such places 
as Warner’s Ranch, in the mountains of San Diego County. Swans occur off the coast 
as well, coming inland at night to feed, but, on the whole, a southern hunter eonsider 
