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| Tundra Swan | ||||||||||||||
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 Whistling Swan Cygnus columbianus columbianus | ||||||||||||||
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| Cygnus columbianus |
Tundra Swan (Cygnus columbianus) is a small Northern Hemisphere swan. It has two races, which are sometimes considered to be separate species.
Whistling Swan (C. c. columbianus) is the nominate North American form, and Bewick's Swan (C. c. bewickii) is the European subspecies. The latter is named after the engraver Thomas Bewick, who specialised in illustrations of birds and animals.
Bewick's is the smallest of the three British swans, similar in appearance to the Whooper Swan, but smaller, shorter-necked and with a more rounded head shape, with variable bill pattern, but always showing more black than yellow (the other way round with Whooper Swans). The bill pattern for every bird is unique, and scientists make detailed drawings of each and give them names to assist with studying this species.
Their breeding habitat is wetland. They pair for life, and their cygnets stay with them all winter; they are sometimes joined by offspring from previous years.
Bewick's Swans breed in the Arctic, right across northern Russia from the Kola Peninsula east to the Pacific. They migrate via the White Sea, Estonia, the Elbe estuary to the Netherlands and Britain. Populations breeding in eastern Russia (roughly east of the Taimyr Peninsula) winter in Japan and China; these are sometimes separated as the race C. c. jankowski, but this is not widely accepted as distinct, most authors including them in C. c. bewickii.
They overwinter in England and Ireland, especially in the wildfowl reserves of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.
These birds feed mainly by grazing on farmland. They have a high pitched honking call.
The American form of Tundra Swan breeds in arctic Alaska and Canada. and winters in the USA. It is distinguished from Bewick's by its largely black bill.
Bewick's Swan
Whistling Swan
