A large pheasantry is operated on the same general lines as a plant where birds are grown in small numbers. The method is simply an extension of that just described. When only one kind of pheasant is kept, the inclosed yard is sometimes made very large, and a hundred or more birds are put together. This is not good practice with any kind of poultry, and is no doubt responsible for much of the trouble which those growing pheasants in large numbers have had. At aviaries where there are large collections of pheasants, including many rare and costly kinds, the yards are always made large enough to give the birds good sanitary conditions, and as a rule each family of adult birds, whether composed of two or more, has a yard to itself.
CHAPTER XV
SWANS
Naturalists divide swans into a number of different species. Whether this division is correct is not known. The habits of swans, and the circumstances under which they are usually kept, tend to prevent the mingling of different kinds. As far as the author has been able to learn, there is no evidence which shows conclusively the relations of any of the supposed different species. The differences between them are in some cases very slight. Some of the decisions of the naturalists who have classified slightly different kinds as distinct species are based upon examinations of very small numbers of specimens. Considering the apparent resemblances of the different kinds of swans in the light of what is known of species and varieties in fowls, ducks, geese, and pheasants, it seems probable that the true species of swans are fewer in number than the common classification shows, and it also seems quite possible that all swans are of the same species.
Description. The common swan, called the domestic swan, is about the size of the largest domestic geese, but appears larger because it has a longer neck and head and larger wings. The body is also somewhat longer than that of a goose of about the same weight, and the swan is a much more graceful bird than a large goose. It is sometimes called the Mute Swan, to distinguish it from the Whistling Swan, which is a very similar kind not bred in domestication. There are other slight differences between the Mute Swans and the Whistling Swans, but the difference in the voice, if it really is as great as is supposed, is the only one of much consequence in deciding their relations. The Mute Swan is not dumb. It sometimes makes a low, whistling sound. People are not agreed as to whether there is any real foundation for the familiar tradition that the Mute Swan remains silent until about to die, and then sings a "song." Some people acquainted with the habits of swans declare that the swan is more vocal when dying than at any other time in its life. Others say that the idea probably arose as a result of some one's hearing a dying swan moaning in pain, as sick animals and birds often do, and concluding that it was uttering a series of sounds characteristic of swans in a dying condition. However that may be, the Mute Swan is distinctly less noisy than the wild Whistling Swan.
Until 1697 all swans known to civilized people were white, and the swan was an emblem of purity of color. In that year a Dutch navigator visiting Australia found there a black swan. Afterwards a white swan with a black neck was discovered in South America. Had the subject of heredity been well understood before the discovery of these two swans that were not white, people familiar with the white swans would have known that there were colored swans in some unexplored country (or that they had existed in the known world in a former age), for white swans are not perfectly white at maturity, and when young they are gray. Neither is the black swan all black. It has white flight feathers, and its black color is a rusty black, that is, a black mixed with red.
Swans are very long-lived birds, but stories of swans living to seventy or eighty years of age are not to be credited. It cannot be affirmed that the birds may not live as long as that, but the evidence in the cases reported is defective. The reports of swans living for fifty years are quite credible. The male and female swan are not readily distinguished, for there are no external indications of sex, and the birds use their voices so rarely that, even if there is a difference in the notes of the male and female, it is not practical to use it to distinguish between them. The only way to identify the sex with certainty is by observing the birds at nesting time.
The name "swan" is Anglo-Saxon. Nothing is known of its derivation. The terms "cock" and "hen" are sometimes applied to swans as they are to many other kinds of birds. The swanherds in England call the male a cob and the female a pen. The young swan is called a cygnet, from the French word for "swan."