The mute swan is one of the heaviest flying birds. The beak of the mute swan is bright orange, with black around the nostrils and a black nail. The plumage is white, while the legs are dark grey. On average, this is the second largest waterfowl species after the trumpeter swan, although male mute swans can easily match or even exceed a male trumpeter in mass. Males are larger than females and have a larger knob on their bill. Description Īdults of this large swan typically range from 140 to 160 cm (55 to 63 in) long, although can range in extreme cases from 125 to 170 cm (49 to 67 in), with a 200 to 240 cm (79 to 94 in) wingspan. Fossils from the Pleistocene include Cygnus paloregonus from Fossil Lake, Oregon, Froman's Ferry, Idaho, and Arizona, referred to by Howard in The Waterfowl of the World as "probably the mute type swan". The latest find was in Anza Borrego Desert, a state park in California. The timeline runs from the Miocene to the late Pleistocene, or 10,000 BP. states: California, Arizona, Idaho and Oregon. Cygnus olor bergmanni, which differed only in size from the living bird, is known from fossils found in Azerbaijan.įossils of swan ancestors more distantly allied to the mute swan have been found in four U.S. They have been recorded from Ireland east to Portugal and Italy, and from France, 13,000 BP (Desbrosse and Mourer-Chauvire 1972–1973). Mute swan subfossils, 6,000 years old, have been found in post-glacial peat beds of East Anglia, Great Britain. The species is monotypic, with no living subspecies. ĭespite its Eurasian origin, its closest relatives are the black swan of Australia and the black-necked swan of South America, not the other Northern Hemisphere swans of the genus Cygnus. Both cygnus and olor mean "swan" in Latin cygnus is a variant form of cycnus, a borrowing from Greek κύκνος kyknos, a word of the same meaning. The mute swan was first formally described by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin as Anas olor in 1789, and was transferred by Johann Matthäus Bechstein to the new genus Cygnus in 1803.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |