Whooper Swan (Wilde Zwaan = Dutch) Cygnus cygnus For the first time in my life we have spotted Whooper Swans in Holland!! They are very beautiful and elegant, but so different from Mute Swans. It was difficult to get close, because they are very shy, and they take off as soon as you come to close. We have seen a group of fifteen over the last few days in the dunes between Zandvoort and Noordwijk. The Whooper Swans migrate to the south from Siberia, and only approximately 1500 of them select Holland as the right place to spent the winter!! In the same area, also for the first time in my life, we spotted also Bewick Swan’s (Kleine Zwaan = Dutch) which are very similar to the Whooper Swan’s but smaller! It was a group of eight animals. Photo taken in the dunes near Vogelenzang. I could not come closer, because they are very shy and nervous for people!! Not a perfect photo, but in my opinion interesting enough to share with you on RR. Many thanks for all your very kind comments on my Swan series nr 1 posting of yesterday!! Have a very nice evening Henk (by the way I’m not for 100% sure that they are Whooper Swans!!) The Whooper Swan is similar in appearance to the Bewick's Swan. However, it is larger. It has a more angular head shape and a more variable bill pattern that always shows more yellow than black Whooper swans require large areas of water to live in, especially when they are still growing, because their body weight cannot be supported by their legs for extended periods of time. The whooper swan spends much of its time swimming, straining the water for food, or eating plants that grow on the bottom Whooper swans have a deep honking call and, despite their size, are powerful fliers. Whooper swans can migrate many hundreds of miles to their wintering sites in northern Europe and eastern Asia. They breed in subarctic Eurasia, further south than Bewick's in the taiga zone.