WHOOPING CRANE. 75 
eggs are two in number, as large as those of the swan, and of a 
bluish-white color blotched with brown. 
Whooping Cranes rise with difficulty from the ground, flying 
low for a time, and thus alford an easy mark for the sportsman. 
At other times they fly around in wide circles as if reconnoi- 
tring the surrounding country for fresh feeding ground ; 
occasionally they rise spirally into the air to a great height, 
mingling their screaming voices together, which are still so 
loud, when they are almost out of sight, as to resemble a pack 
of hounds in full cry. Early in February Wilson met with 
several of these Cranes in South Carolina ; at the same season 
and in the early part of the following month I heard their 
clamorous cries nearly every morning around the enswamped 
ponds of West Florida and throughout Georgia, so that many 
individuals probably pass either the winter or the whole year 
in the southern extremity of the Union. 
It is impossible to describe the clamor of one of these roost- 
mg flocks, which they begin usually to utter about sunrise. 
Like the howling-monkeys, or preachers, of South America (as 
they are called), a single individual seemed at first as if 
haranguing or calling out to the assembled company, and after 
uttering a round number of discordant, sonorous, and braying 
tones, the address seemed as if received with becoming ap- 
plause, and was seconded with a reiteration of jingling and 
trumpeting hurrahs. The idea conveyed by this singular asso- 
ciation of sounds was so striking, quaint, and ludicrous that I 
could never hear it without smiling at the conceit. Captain 
Amidas (the first Englishman who ever set foot in Nortli 
America) thus graphically describes their clamor on his land- 
ing on the isle of Wokokou, off the coast of North Carolina, in 
the month of July: “Such a flock of Cranes (the most part 
white) arose under us, with such a cry, redoubled by many 
echoes, as if an army of men had shouted all together.” But 
though this display of their discordant calls may be amusing, 
e bustle of their great migrations and the passage of their 
eighty armies fills the mind with wonder. In the month of 
ecember, i8it, while leisurely descending on the bosom of 
