Say whoop! if you see any of these swanning about
I CAME upon a small group of whooper swans from the High Arctic yesterday; absolute beauties and they shone like pure white jewels as if they had interior lights switched on.
They were as wild as wild could be and more used to seeing Arctic foxes, whales and dolphins than our brown hares and kestrels.
They were very nervous as I approached and initially their necks were held low as they huddled together with last year’s young on the inside, but the outriders soon began to call in their distinctive ‘whooping’ manner, and all heads were turned in my direction.
This was soon followed by a shaking of wings, before they lifted off as one into the blackening sky, once again like pure white darts of the most wonderful and sensuous symmetry. Let me know if you spot any whoopers in the region, especially if you manage to get a photograph, because on this occasion I missed out. Whooper Facts: 1: Autumn migration begins in late September to early October, and peaks in late October to early November. The 800 mile (1,200 km) crossing from Iceland to Ireland is probably the longest sea crossing undertaken by any swan species. Whooper Swans wintering in Britain have only a slightly shorter overseas flight, of 500 miles from Iceland to landfall in north-west Scotland
2: Whooper Swans are amongst the heaviest of migratory birds weighing around 10 kilos (adult males). Most Icelandic breeding Whooper Swans winter in Britain and Ireland and can be seen at WWT centres: Castle Espie, Caerlaverock, Welney, Martin Mere and Slimbridge. They are very site-faithful and it is common for them to return to the same wintering site year after year.
3: They breed in a broad band of subarctic and taiga habitats across northern Eurasia, from Iceland and northern Scandinavia in the west to Mongolia, northern China and the Russian Far East.
Key sites for Whooper swans include Lough Neagh, Lough and River Foyle, Lough Swilly, Ouse Washes (Welney), Martin Mere / Ribble Estuary, Upper Lough Erne, Lough Beg
4: Whooper swans are almost totally vegetarian, although breeding pairs in Iceland take emerging midges in spring and other invertebrates may occasionally be ingested.
Horse-tails and sedges seem to be the preferred food on the breeding grounds.
Winter diet traditionally included eelgrass, wigeon grass, pondweeds, stoneworts, horsetails, sweet-grass and roots of marsh yellow-cress. Increasing numbers were seen on farmland in the second half of the 20th century, on cereal stubbles, winter cereals, sugar beet and potatoes left after harvesting, and oil-seed rape. Nevertheless, Whooper Swans still feed mostly on improved pasture in winter.
5: Pairs are highly territorial when nesting and generally remain on territories until the young have fledged. Clutch sizes of up to seven eggs have been recorded, though usually there are three – five eggs in the clutch. Similarly, parents are seen with between one and seven cygnets on the wintering grounds. The young remain with their parents only for the first winter, sometimes separating from them before heading back to Iceland in the spring.
Whooper Swans are generally monogamous but divorce does occur; 5.8% of paired swans re-pair whilst their original mate is still alive. Pair formation can occur in winter flocks, or more frequently in nonbreeding herds in spring and summer
First breeding has occurred in second summer in Iceland (I.e. at one-year-old with DNA finger-printing confirming parentage), but first pairing is more usually at two to four years with first breeding at four to six years. Non-breeding birds are gregarious, occurring either in small groups or larger flocks.
6: The autumn migration period lasts around eight weeks. The oversea crossing between Iceland and Britain/ Ireland can take from around 13 hours to 4.5 days. Departure for the breeding grounds occurs mainly in March and April.
Satellite-tracking of Whooper Swans in the mid 1990s found that the time taken to migrate between Britain and Ireland and Iceland ranged from 12.7 – 42.4 hours in autumn, and from 32 – 101 hours in spring.