Its song, or rather its cry, is indeed far from being harmonious. It is a dull and harsh sibilation, not at all agreeable to listen to. Some of the poets, however, have not believed the fable which attributes to these birds a sonorous and melodious voice. Virgil perfectly well knew how hoarse the note of the Swan really was—
"Dant sonitum rauci per stagna loquacia cycni."
Lucretius also says—
"Parvus cycni canor."
The Whooping Swan.
English Synonyms.—Whistling Swan: Montagu, Selby, Jenyns. Whooping Swan: McGillivray. Wild Swan: Hooper, Elk.
Latin Synonyms.—Anas cygnus ferus: Linn. Anas cygnus: Latham, Temminck. Cygnus ferus: Selby, Jenyns. Cygnus musicus: Bonaparte, McGillivray.
French Synonyms.—Cygne à bec jaune: Temminck. Cygne sauvage of authors.
This is, in all probability, the Swan so celebrated among the ancients. It is found in the northern regions of Europe and Asia; residing in summer within the Arctic circle, and migrating southwards and visiting Holland, France, and the British Islands in winter, although occasionally breeding in the north of Scotland. Southward, it extends to Barbary and Egypt; eastward, it wanders as far as Japan. The note of the Wild Swan is a sort of whoop, uttered several times in succession—a hoarse, hard, and rather discordant cry—and this has given it the name we have adopted; for it is difficult to imagine the grounds on which the Prince of Canino gave it the name of Cygnus musicus.
The peculiar organic distinction of the Swan is the great length of the neck, consisting of twenty-three vertebræ, and the cavity in the sternum for the reception of the trachea, which is admirably described by Mr. Yarrell as descending the passage between the two branches of the forked bone called the merrythought to a level with the keel of the breast-bone, which is double, and receives the tube of the trachea between its two sides, which here turns upon itself after traversing the whole length of the keel, and passes upwards and forwards, and again backwards, till it ends in the vertical bone where the two bronchial tubes go off, one to each lobe of the lungs. This is the apparatus through which the cry is produced, which is variously described as a whistle, a whoop, or a song, according to the fancy of the writer. They fly at a great height when on a migratory journey, and in a wedge-like figure, uttering this note as they proceed, and when heard at a distance it is not unmusical. Mr. McGillivray listened to a flock of Wild Swans coming in from the Atlantic after a gale: their clear, loud, and trumpet-like cries delighted him as they sped their way in lengthened files; but they were too far off for him to decide whether or not they were of this species.