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Beware breeding and nesting swans! That’s one of the valuable takeaways from this tragic tale out of Chicago of a man drowned by the very swans he cared for. Also of interest is how Mute Swans are employed to deter Canada Geese. Which would you rather: slovenly geese or homicidal swans? (Hat tip to Meredith!)

I was just browsing through my iPhoto library and I realised that I have almost no photos of the Mute Swan (Cygnus olor). In fact, I have way more photos of Whooping Swans (Cygnus cygnus) – a species I almost never see – than of Mute Swans. Now, I suppose this is almost forgiveable, or [...]

I learned a new word today and am anxious to show it off and share it with the world. A FOLIVORE is an animal that eats leaves. With their high cellulose content and often raised levels of toxins drawn from the ground, mature leaves can be very difficult to digest so a folivore needs specialised [...]

The Mute Swan Cygnus olor became the national bird of Denmark in 1984, replacing the Skylark Alauda arvensis.  So far as I can determine the swan was not officially granted status as the national bird of Denmark by law but by a popular vote held by either Danish Television or Denmark Radio.  Denmark is one [...]

Back a couple of weekends ago when Daisy and I and our friends Mike and Lena were in Cape May Daisy and I snuck off Sunday morning for a walk around the Nature Conservancy’s Cape May Migratory Bird Refuge.  We enjoyed the common birds around the refuge, which included a couple of different pairs of [...]

Some months ago we here at 10,000 Birds learnt about Charleen Turner, and her amazingly patient (and loving) documentation of a pair of Mute Swans and their cygnets that she’d been watching through the summer. Charleen had a gift for telling a story and had taken hundreds of photos too – a combination that seemed [...]

Bird watchers have come to expect nearly endless variations of a small number of familiar forms throughout the world’s 10,000 species. For example, there are over 400 species of warblers worldwide, even though the differences between some of these species seem superficial at best. Still, the prolific diversity of avian archetypes spoils us sometimes. There’s [...]