Whooper Swans in Burscough, Lancashire, Winter flocks have now arrived at Martin Mere Wetland Nature Reserve WWT just outside Southport. As many as 2,000 Icelandic whooper swans are expected to overwinter on the wetlands at WWT Martin Mere, where they received supplementary feeding from October to March after their long flight from Iceland. Satellite-transmitters were fitted to 50 Whooper Swans to track their migration routes & flight heights from Iceland.
Whooper swans breed in northern parts of Eurasia, from Iceland and Scandinavia to eastern Siberia, with almost all birds wintering in Britain arriving from Iceland. An estimated five to six thousand whooper swans winter in Britain, with the majority of birds in Scotland, Lancashire, & Norfolk. Birds typically arrive in mid-October and stay until mid-April. Whooper swans use a wider range of habitats than Bewick’s swans and show more of a preference for coastal and marine habitats, taking advantage of the vegetable growing area around this location to feed on nearby farmland. Offshore wind farms may impact birds directly by mortality from collisions or indirectly by displacement from migratory flyways or local flight paths. Swans and geese are long lived, raising two or three young in a breeding season. The consequences of collisions could therefore be potentially more significant then they would be for short lived species with higher breeding productivity, although Rader studies in the German Bight during spring migration of three species showed that the birds flew at heights of 1,500m to 2,100m. The highest recorded height of whooper swan was a flock flying at 8850m arriving over Northern Ireland, recorded on a plane’s radar and visually identified by the pilot.
Size: 3144px × 2186px
Location: Burscough, Lancashire, UK
Photo credit: © MediaWorldImages / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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