Swanning around

Mute swans are one of Britain’s biggest and heaviest birds. You can often see them swimming on lakes and rivers near you all year round. They especially like places with slow moving water where lots of aquatic plants like pondweed grow for them to munch on. Mute swans are all white with thick black legs, giant webbed feet and orange beaks. Sometimes they put their feet on their backs to rest or to warm them up in the sun, a bit like you crossing your arms to keep warm! They have long ‘S’ shaped necks that help them stretch down to reach their favourite food plants up to a metre under water. They’re not picky though and will happily eat fish, worms and snails, too. Yum!

Whooper swans are named after their loud honking calls. They make lots of ‘whoop –whoop’ sounds to communicate with their families as they fly. Whooper swans live in Iceland all spring and summer where they raise their cygnets, but in autumn they fly nonstop all the way to the UK to avoid the freezing cold winter in Iceland. Whooper swans spend most of their days together grazing in farm fields like cows and sheep. They eat leftover grain and even potatoes. At night they return to lakes to roost where they are safe from predators. Even though whooper swans are large and white, just like mute swans, they have black and yellow beaks and hold their necks straight up, a bit like a periscope on a submarine.

Barely bigger than a goose, Bewick’s swans are our smallest and rarest swan. In spring they nest in Siberia, but when the cold winters draw in and food becomes scarce they make a long and dangerous journey to reach the UK, seeking out a warmer place with more food to spend the winter. These small swans like to eat water plants at the edges of lakes and shallow water, but they’ll also venture out onto low, flooded fields to eat leftover crops and grains. Bewick’s swans look very similar to whooper swans, being all white with a black and yellow beak, but they are much smaller.

Black swans are native to Australia. They are almost all black, but have snowy white wing tips that can be seen when they fly. Their bills are bright red with a white band around the tip. They were brought to the UK to decorate gardens and parks, but over time some escaped into the wild. Some of these escaped birds have even nested in the UK!