7 
Wild Swans, Cygnus ? 
The following notes relate to these birds as observed without 
reference to species. In " A Brife description of Ireland made 
in this yeere, 1589, by Robert Payne,” we are told that "There 
be great store of wild swannes, ****** much 
more plentiful than in England.” Harris, in his History of the 
county of Down published in 1744, says, of Cygnus ferus , — 
" Great numbers of them breed in the islands of Strangford lake” 
(p. 234) ; and in another part of the volume, when enumerating 
such of the islands as are known to him by name, and reckoning 
fifty-four, remarks : — " Pour of these islands are called Swan 
Islands , from the number of swans that frequent them” (p. 154). 
Smith, in his f History of Cork* (vol. ii. p. 351), states that 
" wild swans are very common in the north of Ireland, but were 
only observed in the south parts of the kingdom in the great frost 
of 1739 ;” — what is said of the north maybe copied from Harris, 
as Smith's work is dated 1749. 
In the month of October 1824, a flock of about fifty wild swans 
appeared in Belfast Bay. Captain Cortland Gi Macgregor Skinner, 
when quartered with his regiment at Athlone, about the year 
1830, saw seven of these birds (which he describes as having been 
nearly as large as tame swans) that were killed on Lough Ree by 
the discharge of a double-barrelled gun. In 1839 I learned that 
for a number of years past a flock of eleven came to Portlough, 
near Bogay, county of Donegal, early in winter, and remained 
during the season.* The late Mr. John Nimmo, of Round- 
stone, county Galway, had often observed wild swans passing 
over that neighbourhood on wing; and about the year 1838, he 
saw six or seven on Maam river, at the head of Lough Corrib, 
to which place he was assured the species came regularly 
every winter until the preceding few years, when, owing to the 
country having become more frequented, they had been less 
commonly there. Wild swans appear occasionally in flocks about 
* Mr. Geo. Bowen. 
