September 17 2012, Reykjavik, Iceland. I had never seen a Whooper Swan before today, so when I caught sight of a small group of them in a gravelly river valley it was something of a triumph. They could well have been my Bird of the Day on their own merits but they happened to be almost the only bird of any note seen today,
We’re in Iceland and I had expected to be enthralled by lots of new birds here, but it turns out that while Iceland is a good place for seabirds and shorebirds in the summer, it is somewhat low on passerines all year, and even the seabirds and shorebirds are few and far between now that summer’s over. We spent the day well inland and other than a solitary Common Raven and the cluster of Whooper Swans, I didn’t see any birds until we returned to coastal Reykjavik this evening.
Whooper Swans are closely related to North America’s Tundra and Trumpeter Swans, indeed they’re the Eurasian equivalent of the Trumpeter and some consider them to be the same species. However the Whooper has a mostly yellow bill while the Trumpeter’s bill is all black. 