About a week ago, I shared a story about 2 different species of swans that live on the river, very close to my backyard. This is a young Trumpeter Swan. You can tell by the colour and slope of the bill. (The colour is black and the slope is gentle).
Trumpeter's also have a long graceful neck.
You can see that this swan is standing on the ice, on a part of the river that has just recently frozen.
Notice the buoy that is protruding out of the ice, just behind the swan.
If you look closely, you can see another swan just to the right of the one that is standing. I think the "standing" swan is a male. It was doing a lot of head-bobbing, trying to secure the attention of his mate.
Here we go with a little display. (She wasn't interested in having anything to do with his feather postulations.)
In complete disgust, he eventually gave up...
Then, did the only thing he could do. He took a seat and cooled his jets. It doesn't matter who you are or what species you belong to, ice will do that. (LOL!)
Believe it or not, at -16 degrees Celsius, these birds stay warm. As the winter proceeds and we hit temperatures in the range of -30 degrees Celsius, these birds will huddle very close together and will actually stay that way through the night to preserve their body heat.
I took these photos with my Nikon S7000 digital camera, using 20X optical zoom.
I welcome your comments and I invite you to follow me on my journey...as I attempt to share what I observe in my little corner of our blue planet.
~ Rebecca Ryan
