MUTE SWAN 
215 
bufF, much streaked and mottled with brown, and 
the feathers of the neck and throat are long and 
plume-like, while those of the nape can be raised 
and expanded into a hood or ruff. At the breed- 
ing season the male bird makes a very loud and 
remarkable bellowing noise, chiefly by night. It 
is also a night feeder. Its food is chiefly animal, 
and as various as that of the Heron. It builds a 
large nest of dry reeds in the thick of the marshy 
vegetation early in the spring, and lays four eggs 
of deep, unspotted yellowish-brown. Very old men 
in the " parts of Holland " in Lincolnshire, and 
other districts of what is still known as the Fen 
Country, can still remember and describe the 
Bittern's bellowing note, which it was formerly 
believed the bird produced with its bill thrust inside 
a hollow, trumpet-like reed ; but it is fully fifty 
years since the voice of the Bittern was last heard 
in spring in most of the fenland parishes. 
MUTE SWAN. 
{Cygnus olor.) 
Like the Pheasant and Red-legged Partridge, 
the common Swan is not a native British bird. 
But it has for centuries been so familiar on our 
lakes, rivers, and harbours in a half-wild state that 
