Kingdom, the decoy for Ducks must, I should think, be amongst the smallest, for what would a Norfolk or Lincoln decoyman say to these insignificant results?
To revert to the Swans. Though their number is said to be sadly diminished, a flock of seven hundred of these noble birds is still a goodly colony. Indeed I know not where else in England such a sight may be seen. Lloyd, in his 'Scandinavian Adventures' (vol. ii., p. 431), speaking of the Hooper, says that astounding numbers sometimes pass the winter off the western coast of Sweden, and that Mr. Richard Dann once counted, in Kongsbacka fjord alone, upwards of five hundred birds. He adds that at the breeding season, when the ice disappears, it is the habit of the Hoopers to separate in pairs, and retire to the more sequestered of the mountain lakes and morasses.[1] The same graphic writer also gives a very spirited account of the annual battue of the Mute Swan, which lakes place in Sweden when the birds are in moult, and therefore unable to take wing and escape; and he calls attention to the magnificent sight of a thousand or twelve hundred Swans congregated in one spot, when these Swan hunts take place, and declares that though at an English battue we may "justly pride ourselves on a bouquet or rush of Pheasants, yet beautiful a sight as it is to see a hundred or two of these splendid birds on the wing at once, the Swans collected at a Swan hunt carry away the palm." It is this magnificent sight, on a somewhat smaller scale, and without the butchery and bloodshed, which may be enjoyed by the visitor to Abbotsbury. He need not journey to Sweden, or to Northern Asia, Eastern Russia, Siberia, or the Caspian Sea, where the true home of the Mute Swan seems to lay; but in a retired peaceful estuary on the southern coast of England, and within an easy drive of one of our favourite watering-places, he may see a Swannery of no mean dimensions, which can scarcely fail to interest the least observant.
- ↑ For an accurate account of the breeding of Cygnus musicus and C. Bewickii, see Messrs. Seebohm and Harvie Brown on the "Birds of the Lower Petchora," 'Ibis' for 1870 (3rd series, vol. vi., pp. 437–441).
