The graceful swan has always inspired man
famously perhaps “Swan Lake”, Tchaikovsky’s renowned ballet which, based on ancient legend, romantically brings man and swan together. A composition, I guess, inspired by the graceful movement of swans which has caught man’s eye since the earliest of times. There is indeed a statuesque beauty about wild whooper swans especially, as they glide across our lochs. Indeed their grace is acknowledged across the globe. The Japanese celebrate the arrival of ‘the angels’ – whooper swans – from Siberia in the autumn!
I suspect the swan images most folk have in their minds are of mute swans, which, whilst sometimes inhabiting remote lochs and lochans, are most notable for their willingness to share space with us, especially if we have a handful of bread! Therefore, park ponds and familiar, river and loch-side beats and even canals are where you might expect to find them.
But whooper swans, our truly wild swans are happier with their own company and generally avoid close human contact. Furthermore, they are, I might suggest, even more graceful than the heavier mute swans, especially in the air. Watch a mute swan taking off from water for instance and the image initially is of a lumbering, hard-working takeoff, feet frantically paddling the water. By comparison, even in flight the whooper is an athlete, take-off a much less laborious procedure.
In flight the mute swans wings sigh- it is literally, the wind whistling through their mighty wings. The comparatively airier take-off of the whooper, whilst altogether more easily accomplished, is accompanied by softer sounds, coming not from the wings but from their throats, most typically, a soft fluting or trumpeting. In every way, their flight is easier, their passage certainly more comfortable and most pleasing on the ear. When whoopers settle during winter on our local loch the sequence at first light is initially raucous as the massed ranks of rooks set out for feeding. Then it becomes somewhat garrulous as the pink-footed geese rise from their watery roost before finally there is the soothing sound as the whoopers croon their passing.
Whoopers are rooted deep in folklore. In rural Ireland where such legends are still rife, some believe that these wild swans are the re-incarnations of ill-used religious ladies, driven from home and forced to wander. The Ancient Greeks of course held swans in great esteem. Zeus, in the guise of a swan conceived Apollo and his twin Artemis and indeed Apollo was said to have been transported each winter in a sun chariot drawn by swans to the region of the Hyberboreans – a mythical race of giants who dwelt, like the swans, beyond the north wind!
The more slender whoopers generally swim with their necks erect, in contrast to the gracefully curving necks of mute swans. In a sense their arrival marks the beginning of winter as certainly as their departure in the spring signifies the advance of a new season of re-birth. Gaelic tradition offers them as good omens, especially if you ever see seven of them together! Seven swans a-swimming perhaps?