Super Whooper

A whooper swan by the Biel in Belhaven Bay. I popped into Dunbar this afternoon and stopped by the bridge to look at the large flock of mute swans that were coming up-river with the tide. In amongst them was one whooper swan, and I concentrated on him (her?) for my photos. It was very misty all day, but it cleared just enough for these pictures - as you can see the haar is thick behind her (him?).

As far as I can tell he's (she's?) not supposed to be here. Whoopers are winter visitors to the UK, so maybe the poor thing's been left behind. It's not ringed either. Hmm. It was certainly able to fly around the Bay. The mutes seemed to be friendly towards her (him?) too, so hopefully everything's gonna be alright.

Whilst there I bumped into Iain, Lindsey and Frazer which is always nice. They'd given up on the idea of a trip to Tyninghame beach, basically because you couldn't see very far in front of your nose.

Whoopers are noticeably more nervous than mute swans. I've seen them often in flocks in fields, but I've never been able to approach them closely. Mute swans on the other hand are very confident, like this one I blipped previously. I wondered if it's because whoopers are hunted and so wary of people, so I looked that up and I think it is the case that only mutes are protected by the famous "all swans belong to the queen" rule. But that might be rubbish.

Anyway, I was listening to a radio programme about Sir Peter Maxwell Davies when he spoke about the police being involved after he cooked a swan he found dead. Brilliant use of police time, eh? In a BBC article he says that it was a whooper swan which come "from Iceland and there are hundreds of them." There's a whooper swan on a Finnish coin as well it seems (thanks Wikipedia) because it's their national bird. So, that's where our friend here should be.

Oh, and when bird flu was first found in birds in the UK, it was a whooper swan that had it. It was a dead whooper swan in fact, so hopefully nobody tried to eat her (him?).

For more of my Belhaven stuff, search blipfoto for 'belhaven by allan'

Some more on Flickr, including this extrordinary pose by a mute swan. Nearly blip.