Elegant, graceful, serene and pure, these are the adjectives come into my mind when I see swans. I enjoy taking photos of them.
I have taken 100s of photos of swans since 2008, at Yellowstone National Park, Denali National Park (US)), at Hyde park, London (UK), in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. To be exact, I took photos of 3 species of swans, mute swan, black swan and trumpeter swan, out of six living species of swans. The other 3 species are whooper swan, black necked swan and tundra swan.
It is noted that when people talk about swan, they typically refer to mute swans - which have solid white plumage, orange beak, with a black knob atop the beak. It has dark grey legs. The reason that a swan was called mute swan, is that it is less vocal than other species of swans.
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| a lonely swan at Swan lake |
There used to have a pair of swans at Swan Lake of Singapore Botanic Garden, which endeared them to me with their serene demeanor and graceful appearance since we started walking in the garden daily 3 years ago. Every week I would pass the swan lake at least once, rain or shine, and I would look for them. They were almost always being together, close or slightly apart. If one of them was out of sight, I would look for it until I spotted it.
But I have not seen any cygnets - babe swans at Swan lake.
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| during the day |
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| in the morning |
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| in Sunshine |
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| in rain |
A months ago or so, the swans disappeared from the Swan lake for several weeks. Then only one sawn reappears, swims lonely in the lake now. For whatever reason, one swan was gone.
During our trip to mt Fuji, I saw a pair of swans at Kawaguchi lake near Mt Fuji. In fact there were several pairs of swans at Kawaguchi.
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| a pair of swans at Lake Kawaguchi |
The only time I saw a swan family was at Hyde Park in London. The babe swan is indeed "ugly", they grow to adult size quickly but need time to change their plumage to solid white.
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| a swan family, two adults, and two cygnets |
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| a babe swan - "ugly duckling" |
There are black swans at the echo lake in Singapore botanic garden. Unlike swan lake, the presence of the black swans here is quite random, sometimes there is only one black swan, some times there is a pair, and occasionally there is family of black swans, It seems that black swans are moved back and forth from a zoo. In fact there is a large cage on the east side of the lake, hidden in the dense plantations. There is extended period there is none, not even in the cage.
It is very similar to mute swan except that it has black plumage. The black swan has a red beak with a whitish tip, in contrast to mute swan's orang beak and back knob on it beak. Another feature is that it has white flight feather under its wings.
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| a solo black swan |
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| white flight feathers on a black swan |
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| a pair of black swans |
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| a family of black swans |
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| caged black swan family |
Black swans are native to Australia, black swans in other locations were introduced, such Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia.
We saw a black swan family in the wild at swan river of the City of Perth of West Australia. Just like mute swan (a.k.a. white swan), the cygnets, young black swans have grayish plumage, totally different from their parents
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| two adult black swans with three cygnets |
We saw a pair of beautiful black swans in Avon river, at Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand, during our south island adventure in December 2923.
Trumpeter swans have white plumage, but black beak. We saw trumpeter swans in Denali National Park in Alaska, and Yellowstone national park. In fact serendipity was our side during our Yellowstone stone trip, we saw both a brown bear and trumpeter swan in a relative short time span. We only saw a solo swan both times.
Mute swans, black swans and trumpeter swans are monogamous breeders, they mate for life. A pair of swans symbolize love, loyalty and fidelity.
