To be sincere, I by no means cared an excessive amount of for swans. On the one hand, they’re very straightforward to see in Germany, swimming in public parks or educating pensioners learn how to eat bread. However, their white coloration and their appreciable dimension made me see them as considerably smug birds – the white Golf convertible of the fowl world.
Opposite to how ChatGPT would now proceed this submit, seeing them at Lake Kussharo didn’t actually change this view. In winter, this lake is nearly utterly frozen – however a couple of meters very near the coast are close to some scorching springs, and the Whooper Swans use this house to collect and principally do nothing there (which didn’t do something to alter my notion of them).
They’re ridiculously unafraid of individuals there – so the cynic in me suspects that swan meat isn’t thought to be tasty by the Japanese (one other rationalization, that the Japanese identical to animals an excessive amount of, can presumably be discarded given the nation’s very principled strategy in insisting on the fitting to kill whales).
And now we get to the a part of the submit by which I briefly and unscientifically point out a couple of analysis papers on the species to have a motive to submit a couple of extra of my photographs.
One paper finds that medium-height windfarms are a much bigger danger for Whooper Swans than massive wind generators, as apparently, the swans fly comparatively low and thus face a much bigger collision danger with the previous. So, for those who plan to erect a wind turbine in your backyard and likewise hold swans, be sure that the turbine may be very excessive.
The Journal “Ecological Indicators” may presumably do with higher peer reviewers – the highlights part of a paper on “Stimulating results of Whooper Swans’ behaviors on nutrient releasing from the sediments brought on by totally different human feeding intensities within the swan Lake, China” (in itself a little bit of a catastrophe of a title) has sentences reminiscent of “Aggression behaviors of swans benefited for extra nutrient N and P launch from the sediment underneath supplemental feeding disturbance” which could be a significant sentence in Chinese language however not likely in English. It appears the paper is on the impact of swan feeding and swan motion on the discharge of vitamins, however given the language, I can’t be too certain about this.
Different researchers apparently tried to get their universities to fund their drone toys, leading to papers with titles reminiscent of “Using drones to check the breeding productiveness of Whooper Swan“.
One other discovering doesn’t come as a shock to birders watching birds each from automobiles and on foot. Pedestrians alert the Whooper Swans for longer durations than automobiles and plane.
A complete of 13 authors seemed on the migration patterns of Whooper Swans (4 of them apparently have been concerned within the idea improvement of the examine – it should certainly be very exhausting to develop an idea for a fowl migration examine). They discovered that the Whooper Swans traveled extra quickly in autumn (22 days) than in spring (57 days), which is considerably shocking to me.
On the finish of the summary, they slightly pompously (however admittedly inside the norms of scientific boasting) state that “These findings are vital for the conservation and administration of Whooper Swans and their key habitats in East Asian areas, and the info are anticipated to make a very vital contribution towards growing detailed administration plans for the conservation of their key habitats.”
Presumably, all readers of 10,000 Birds assume that nature reserves are necessary – a paper tries to quantify that significance to some extent. It states that populations of Whooper Swans develop 30 occasions quicker inside nature reserves than exterior.
One other location issue is highlands versus lowlands – Whooper Swans breeding in Icelandic lowlands had a a lot greater breeding success than the highland birds (supply). Nevertheless, some swans declare that the views are a lot better within the highland habitat, and others are usually not that eager on elevating chicks anyway.
Lastly, for those who actually love Whooper Swans and wish to get to know all the pieces that’s to find out about them, take a look at papers on the “Comparative Evaluation of the Fecal Bacterial Microbiota of Wintering Whooper Swans” or on the “First detection of Blastocystis sp. in migratory whooper swans (Cygnus cygnus) in China”. And if a swan seems at you in a very smug manner, present it these papers too.
Notice: Whereas all photographs have been taken on Hokkaido in Feb 2024, not all have been taken at Lake Kussharo.
