248 
Allen’s naturalist’s library. 
Nestling-. — Clothed with white down. 
Characters. — There is no knob at the base of the bill, which 
has nearly the basal half yellow ; the black terminal portion 
not extending above the nostrils, and only reaching laterally 
half-way to the gape. Culmen, 4'2 inches. 
Range in Great Britain. — The Whooper or Whistling Swan, as 
this species is variously called, is a bird of passage, or a winter 
visitor, arriving on the coasts and islands of Northern Britain 
in November, and remaining till the spring, sometimes as late 
as May. Hard weather will bring the Swans south, and they 
may then be found on the southern coasts, or even on large 
sheets of inland waters. In Ireland they are said to be far less 
plentiful than Bewick’s Swan. 
Range outside the British Islands. — 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, as well as to Central 
Asia, the Japanese Islands, and China. In Norway it is only 
found nesting above the Arctic Circle, but in Sweden and in 
Northern Russia it is found as low as 62° N. lat. 
Habits. — Mr. Seebohm gives the following excellent account 
of the habits of the Wild Swan “ When Harvie-Brown and 
I were in the valley of the Petchora, waiting at Ust Zylma, a 
little south of the Arctic Circle, for summer to come, one of 
the first warnings that we had of the approaching break-up of 
the winter was the arrival of the Swans. At first they arrived 
in pairs. The earliest date was on the nth of May; every 
day the numbers passing over increased, and occasionally we 
saw them on the snow or on the ice ; until on the 20th, when 
the ice on the river broke up, the last Swan appeared to have 
passed us, and we saw no more of them, until we arrived at 
their breeding-grounds. A month later, when we had reached 
the tundra, where a few small birches and willows was all that 
was left of forest-growtli, we came upon the breeding-ground of 
the Swans in the delta of the Petchora. We found several 
nests between the 19th and 30th of June. The Whooper is a 
very shy bird. We never got a chance of a shot, except once 
or twice from a boat. We saw very little of it on the tundra, 
