TRUMPETER SWAN. 
299 
TRUMPETER SWAN. 
Olor buccinator. 
Char. Plumage white; bill and legs black. Length 60 to 65 inches. 
Nest. Usually on dry upland, hid amid scrubby bushes ; made of grass 
and twigs lined with feathers and down. 
Ei;<;s. 2-6 ; white with a rough chalk-like surface ; average size 4.40 
X 2.fc. 
According to Richardson, this is the most common Swan in 
the interior of the fur countries, which it frequents to breed 
as far south as the 6ist parallel, but principally within the 
Arctic Circle. In its migrations it is generally seen to precede 
the Ceese by a few days. It is to the Trumpeter that the bulk 
of the Swan-skins imported by the Hudson Bay Company 
belong. Lawson remarks that these birds arrive in great flocks 
in Carolina in autumn, and frequent the rivers and fresh waters, 
retiring thence to breed in the North as early as February. 
This species, remarkable for its loud clarion, descends the 
valley of the Mississippi in great flights at the approach of 
winter. Hearne, who also observed this 'Prumpeter, remarks ; 
“ I have heard them, in serene evenings, after sunset, make a 
noise not very unlike that of a French horn, but entirely 
divested of every note that constituted melody, and have often 
been sorry that it did not forebode their death.” The trachea 
is well supplied with the means of producing this hollow clang, 
a fold of it entering a protuberance on the dorsal or interior 
aspect of the sternum at its upper part, which is wanting both 
in Cys^us ferns and C. bewickii ; in other respects the wind- 
pipe is distributed through the sternum nearly as in the latter 
of these species. 
The Trumpeter is a bird of the interior, and is seen but occa- 
sionally to the eastward of the Mississippi, and is rare on the 
Atlantic coast. A few examples have been seen on Lake Ontario. 
It breeds from Iowa and Dakota northward. 
Note. — The Whooping Swan {Olor cygnus'), a European bird, 
occurs occasionally in Greenland. 
