Whooper swan

Voice

Loud, bugling and often trisyllabic: a trumpeting whoop-whoop-whoop or kloo-kloo-kloo with a metallic, horn-like ring that carries for kilometres. Called mostly in flight and on arrival at a field, and heard constantly on clear January days as families call to one another across the polder.

Identification

As big as Mute Swan but with a straight, stiffly held neck and a flat, angular head profile. The bill is black with an extensive lemon-yellow base that runs forward in a sharp wedge past the nostril. First-winters are grey-brown with a dull pink bill that only turns yellow through the course of the winter.

Confusion species

Mute Swan has an orange bill with a black knob, an S-curved neck and a cocked tail. Bewick's is smaller and shorter-necked, and its yellow bill patch is small and rounded and stops behind the nostril, whereas on Whooper the yellow reaches forward in a long sharp point.

Habitat

Winters on damp grassland, river floodplains, winter cereals and beet or potato residues, roosting on shallow open water. Breeds beside forest lakes, bog pools and slow rivers in the taiga of Iceland, Fennoscandia and Russia. Feeds by grazing and by upending for aquatic plants in shallow water.

Range and movements

Breeds in Iceland, northern Scandinavia and northern Russia, and in recent years in small numbers in the Netherlands and Germany. Winters in Ireland, Britain, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, concentrating in the northern and eastern polders. In Spain it is exceptional, with a few records in the north.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

From December to February try the Lauwersmeer area, the IJssel floodplain, the Ooijpolder and north-east Groningen. Drive the minor roads at first light when families are grazing on stubble and beet fields, and listen as much as you look: the bugling usually reaches you before the birds are in view.

Conservation status

In Europe the recent trend is positive: the Scandinavian and Icelandic breeding populations have grown and the range is spreading south. Persistent threats are collisions with power lines and wind turbines, lead poisoning, disturbance at roosts and the continuing loss of wet grassland to intensive agriculture.