Entries Tagged ‘Formations’:

Spent a few days again photographing our most beautiful winter visitor to the UK shores,the beautiful and elegant,’Whooper Swan’, I have been trying to get close up views of the formations they fly in, inches apart from disaster should they touch each other in flight,  I was trying to convey the organised manner in which they fly so close together as well.

I’ve been watching them feed on farmland from the outskirts of woodland on the North-West coast of the UK for the last 3 months.Once they have eaten they fly off to their overnight roost site where they spend the night,the sky is temporary a wash with white as hundreds of Whoopers taken flight.While waiting I had a Treecreeper for company,wanted to show the lovely patterns on the tree trunk and the splash of white from the snow during our coldest spell of weather in decades in the UK.I have composed the bird to give you an idea of how well these tiny birds blend into their habitat

Whooper Swans spend their time here during our winter months before migrating back to their breeding areas which range from Iceland to NE Siberia, they depart from their breeding areas in September and reach wintering areas by November leaving the wintering area,ie UK, in mid-March for a May return .Whooper swans are highly vocal,with bugling calls,these are used during aggressive encounters, with softer “contact” noises used as communication between paired birds and families. Calls accompanying pre-flight head-bobbing are also important for maintaining pair and family bonds. Several types of threat display are seen in winter to establish the dominance hierarchy in the wintering flock, ranging from head-low threats and pecks to more dramatic neck-stretching and wing-flapping displays, resulting occasionally in physical combat.

There’s still quite a bit of time to see these beautiful birds that spend their winters with us in their favoured habitats of lakes, estuaries, marshes,flooded fields and farmland before they depart for their breeding grounds in March-April.They fly so effortless for a large bird and I watched amazed at how close they fly next to each other,all knowing there places without colliding into one another

The couple of photographs below of a Whooper Swan give you some ideal of their individual size and wing shape which make these formations even more remarkable