The mute, or tame swan, is as well known to most people as the turkey, goose, and pheasant, and, like the pheasant, is supposed to be a foreign species, said to have been first brought from Cyprus to this country, by Richard I., about the end of the twelfth century. As a semi-domestic species it exists throughout the British Islands, but whether wild birds of its species visit us or not is not known, since wild and semi-wild birds are indistinguishable. The wild mute swan breeds in Denmark and South Sweden, in South Russia and the valley of the Danube, and many other localities, and in winter visits the Mediterranean. The breeding habits of the wild and tame bird are the same, but, according to Naumann, the wild bird in the pairing season has a loud, trumpet-like note, resembling the cry of a crane or whooper swan.
The cygnet is sooty grey in colour, but in the so-called ‘Polish swan’ (Cygnus immutabilis) of Yarrell, which is now regarded by most ornithologists as a variety of the mute swan the cygnets are white.
Whooper Swan.
Cygnus musicus.
Beak: anterior part depressed and black, basal part quadrangular and lemon-colour; plumage white; legs and feet black. Length, sixty inches; weight, about twenty-four pounds.
The whooper, also called the wild swan and the whistling swan, is a not uncommon visitor to our coasts in winter, and a little over a century ago had a breeding-station in the Orkneys. It is very closely related to the mute swan, but it ranges very much farther north in summer, its breeding-grounds being north of the arctic circle. The nest is bulky, composed of sedge and coarse herbage, and the eggs are four or five in number, and white. Seebohm, who observed its habits in its breeding-grounds, says: ‘The whooper is a ten times handsomer bird than a tame swan in the eyes of an ornithologist, but is not really so graceful—its neck is shorter, and its scapulars are not so plume-like. Instead of sailing about with its long neck curved in the shape of the letter S, bent back almost to the fluffed-up scapulars, the whooper seemed intent on feeding with his head and neck under water.’ He compares the notes of the whooper to a bass trombone; but the notes are short—three or four trumpet-blasts, keeping time with the upward and downward beat of the wings. He adds: ‘The extermination of the whooper in so many of its breeding-places has arisen from the unfortunate habit, which it evidently acquired years ago, before men came upon the scene—a habit which it shares with the goose. Most birds moult their quills slowly, in pairs, so that they are only slightly inconvenienced by the operation, and never without quills enough to enable them to fly. Swans and geese, on the other hand, drop nearly all their flight-feathers at once, and for a week or two, before the new feathers have grown, are quite unable to fly. In some localities the whoopers have had the misfortune to breed where the natives have been clever enough to surround them at the critical period of their lives, and stupid enough to avail themselves of the opportunity thus afforded of killing the geese that laid the golden eggs.’
Bewick’s swan (Cygnus Bewickii), named by Yarrell after Thomas Bewick, author of a well-known ‘History of British Birds,’ is of frequent occurrence in the British Islands in severe winters, but is not a regular visitant. It is a third smaller than the whooper, which it resembles in figure and habits.
Common Sheldrake.
Tadorna cornuta.
