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Whooper Swan

Whooper Swan

Cygnus cygnus

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The Whooper Swan is a large, elegant swan of the northern Palearctic and the Eurasian counterpart of North America's Trumpeter Swan. Adults are pure white with a yellow-and-black bill and a deep, trumpeting call. It breeds on lakes and bogs in the subarctic taiga and migrates to winter in western and southern Europe and eastern Asia. Pairs typically form lifelong bonds.

Did you know?

  • Its legs and feet have a countercurrent heat-exchange system that keeps them from freezing.
  • It is the Eurasian counterpart of the North American Trumpeter Swan.

Voice

Song
Flight call

About the species

Identification

A large white swan with a yellow-and-black bill without a black knob; it is also told from Mute Swan by its straighter neck. Young birds are grey. It is clearly larger than Tundra Swan and has more yellow on the bill. The call is a deep, brassy trumpeting; in flight its wings do not make the loud throbbing sound of a Mute Swan.

Family

Anatidae

Size

Very large (swan)

Colours

white, yellow, black

About the habitat

Breeds on shallow lakes, ponds, bogs and marshes with emergent vegetation; outside the breeding season ice-free lakes, rivers, sheltered bays and fields.

Diet

Mainly aquatic plants – leaves, stems, roots and tubers; also grasses and spilled grain and crops in fields in winter.

Behaviour

A long-distance migrant that travels in noisy family groups and flocks with deep, bugling calls. Flocks use head-bobbing and wing-flapping signals to coordinate take-off. Pairs usually mate for life and build a large mound nest of vegetation on a low islet or lake shore; the female incubates while the male guards. Families stay together through the first winter.

Sources

Photo: Jason Thompson, CC0 1.0 https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/5938160477

Sound: Pascal Christe, XC510800, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/510800

Sound: Jochem Verweij, XC931500, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/931500

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions + Wikipedia (Finnish), CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0; Wikipedia: CC BY-SA 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whooper_swan

See also