Whooper Swan
I thought this was sufficiently different from yesterday's group shot so decided to post another. It shows off the magnificent 230cm wing span which is bigger than any other regular British bird. Mute Swans are a bit shorter in wing length (223cm) and Golden Eagles are only 212cm and weigh about half that of Whoopers. The oldest known ringed individual was 28 years though typically it would be under ten. They start breeding at four years old and stay with their families on migration and on their wintering grounds too. Most of the birds we get in winter are from Iceland though a small proportion are from Scandinavia. The Whooping calls are produced by convolutions or loops in the trachea, which modify the sound rather like the tubes in a brass instrument. Back in the early nineteenth century one of the key pieces of evidence that Whooper Swans and Bewick's Swans were different species was that on dissection the structure of the trachea was consistently different. And incidentally Mute Swan was so named because it does not make the trumpeting sound that both Whooper and Bewick's Swans make.
Whooper Swan
I thought this was sufficiently different from yesterday's group shot so decided to post another. It shows off the magnificent 230cm wing span which is bigger than any other regular British bird. Mute Swans are a bit shorter in wing length (223cm) and Golden Eagles are only 212cm and weigh about half that of Whoopers. The oldest known ringed individual was 28 years though typically it would be under ten. They start breeding at four years old and stay with their families on migration and on their wintering grounds too. Most of the birds we get in winter are from Iceland though a small proportion are from Scandinavia. The Whooping calls are produced by convolutions or loops in the trachea, which modify the sound rather like the tubes in a brass instrument. Back in the early nineteenth century one of the key pieces of evidence that Whooper Swans and Bewick's Swans were different species was that on dissection the structure of the trachea was consistently different. And incidentally Mute Swan was so named because it does not make the trumpeting sound that both Whooper and Bewick's Swans make.