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The habitats found at RSPB Lochwinnoch are an attractive place for a wide range of birds that make a huge effort to migrate here from distant northern shores. The whooper swan is one such example. Their ‘whooping’ call, and yellow bill distinguish them from our resident mute swans, and they will soon undertake the return journey back to their breeding grounds in Iceland – see these majestic birds while you can!
In recent months, visitors to RSPB Lochwinnoch have enjoyed regular sightings of Icelandic whooper swans on the reserve. These beautiful birds may look serene and elegant, but beneath their graceful exterior they are tough cookies, making a mammoth 1,200-mile journey to spend the winter in our relatively milder climate. A drop in temperature usually kick-starts the migration, prompting the whoopers to start their journey, and it’s not a slow amble. These remarkable birds can cross the 700 mile stretch of the North Atlantic between Iceland and Scotland in under 13 hours, meaning an average speed of 55 mph! Records show that whooper swans have been seen at heights in excess of 8,000m, at temperatures of -40C! How’s that for steely determination and grit?!
Whoopers make a distinctive honking or ‘whooping’ noise which gives them their name (© Joe Crossland)
After breeding in Iceland in the summer, the swan family will travel as a group, remaining together until the youngsters reach maturity and find their own mate.
Two adult whooper swans with their juvenile offspring – note the different colouration in the bill and feathers (© Joe Crossland)
Like the smaller Bewick’s swans, individual whoopers can be recognised by their bill markings, a little like our fingerprints, but that’s a skill learned only with time and familiarity. Luckily, for the casual observer, conservation scientists studying whooper swans (and other wildfowl species) also routinely place coloured rings on their legs, making identification easier. The unique identifying code can be read from a distance, without the need to recapture the bird. This way the lives of individual birds can be monitored over time, allowing conservationists to learn more about their habits and behaviour.
Photo of wallpaper at WWT Caerlaverock showing bill markings and associated leg rings (pic by Joe Crossland)
Examples of the differences in whooper swan bill markings (© Joe Crossland)
In early February, a group of 11 whooper swans dropped into RSPB Lochwinnoch, and were close enough to the visitor centre for Norman, one of our volunteers, to notice that one among them had a red leg ring. Using a telescope Norman managed to read the white capital letters APP. A few quick emails later and we knew that ‘APP’ was male, and had been ringed back in 2003 at the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust’s (WWT) Martin Mere reserve in Lancashire. The last reported sighting of this bird was at WWT’s Caerlaverock reserve in Dumfries on 6th March 2014, so it was great to provide up-to-date information on his whereabouts to the monitoring team at WWT.
Another female whooper with the yellow leg ring ‘VXL’ has been seen a number of times at RSPB Lochwinnoch in recent years. She was ringed by WWT Martin Mere in 1996, and was seen on the Aird Meadow in 2002, again in 2003, and then arrived with a mate and four cygnets in 2004. She was last seen on the Barr Loch in 2011 and again in 2014 – making her at least 18 years old at this last sighting.
An example of a whooper swan with a coloured ring (© Joe Crossland)
Another whooper (yellow) ‘9SP’, was ringed in 1999 by WWT at Caerlaverock, and, after spending the next few winters between Caerlaverock and the Moray Firth, 9SP visited Lochwinnoch in 2004 with a mate and one cygnet. She was subsequently seen in various locations – mostly in the Moray area, including in 2005 with her mate and two more cygnets. A sighting was also recorded in Iceland in the Spring of 2006, but since a sighting in Moray in 2007, has not been seen since. It could be that she has not survived the gruelling conditions of a subsequent migration.
Typically, whoopers live around nine years, but according to the BTO the oldest known Whooper swan was 28 years, 2 months and 10 days!
The whoopers typically head back to Iceland from March to breed, and will be back again in the UK next winter with their young. Who knows who will turn up in Lochwinnoch next year? It would be great to see APP again, knowing that he has survived the exhausting journey to Iceland and back in the intervening months. The more you learn about these birds, the more you realise how remarkable they are, and how lucky we are to have them on our reserve.
If you spot a swan with a coloured ring on its leg, you can report it to WWT’s monitoring programme by emailing details to colourmarkedwildfowl@wwt.org.uk – WWT will log your sighting in their database and provide you with a life history of the swan in question, giving you a unique insight into their remarkable life.
Many thanks to Zul Bhatia at RSPB Lochwinnoch for providing details on whooper swan sightings on the reserve, and to Julia Newth and Kane Brides at WWT for providing whooper flight speed facts and information on individual birds.
Whooper swan (© Joe Crossland)
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