BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 
them as he thought he had done wrong ; but they were 
exhumed and identified. In early December, 1899, a flock 
of forty Whoopers was observed on Blackshaw Bank.* 
The story of " The White Swan of Closeburn " is still 
remembered locally, though the Kirkpatricks, who for so 
many years lived there, are no longer in residence, and the 
tale dates back to the end of the seventeenth century. It 
is thus told by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe in 1815 to Mr. 
(afterwards Sir) Walter Scott There was one picturesque 
tale attached to Closeburne. A white swan appears on the 
loch which surrounded the castle before the death of any 
member of the family. My great grandfather's father, the 
first baronet, married a daughter of Lord Torphichen by 
whom he had two sons. After her death he married Miss 
Hamilton of Raploch. At the wedding-supper the young 
heir looked very dowie, and on his father's reprovmg him 
for it, supposing he did not like the notion of a stepmother 
merely said : ' Before long ye'U look wae too. ^^ He haa 
seen the swan that evening, and died that night."t 
" The Whooper breeds in high northern latitudes from 
Iceland eastwards throughout northern Europe and Siberia, 
wandering south in winter to most of the Mediterranean 
countries."} 
BEWICK'S SWAN. Cygnus hewicki, Yarrell. 
A winter-visitant to the Solway. 
Bewick's Swan weighs from thirteen to fifteen pounds and 
is from forty-six to fifty inches in length, and is, therefore, 
a much smaUer bird than the Whooper Swan, from which, 
however, it is not easily distinguished when seen on the wmg 
or at a distance. 
» Ann. Scot. Nat. Hiet., 1900, p. 120. 
t C. K. Sharpe's Corretpondence, 1888, Vol. II., pp. 126, 127. 
1 Lloyd's Nat. Hist., 1896, Vol. II., p. 248. 
