{"id":9280,"date":"2013-12-12T16:18:15","date_gmt":"2013-12-13T00:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=9280"},"modified":"2013-12-14T09:25:34","modified_gmt":"2013-12-14T17:25:34","slug":"swan-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=9280","title":{"rendered":"Swan again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I posted a single picture without comment: <a title=\"Shades of white\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=9273\">Shades of white<\/a>. I had just photographed a swan by the water&#8217;s edge and was so entranced by the beauty of its spread wings that I quickly picked one shot and posted it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 2px 2px 4px 6px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: -10px; margin-left: 8px; width: 340px; float: right; clear: left; color: #555555; background-color: #eeeeee; border: #dddddd 2px solid;\"><strong>Rewrite<\/strong>\u00a0When posted yesterday, I came to the conclusion that the swan was a Tundra. Rick Howie has persuaded me that it is a Trumpeter Swan. Consequently, this posting has been rewritten.<\/p>\n<p>However, this lovely creature deserves more: Which species is it? It is usually seen swimming and feeding, so why was it now standing? Was yesterday&#8217;s image choice the best?<\/p>\n<p>My initial impression was that this was a Trumpeter Swan&#8212;despite a subsequent day spent suspecting it to be a Tundra. Some signs of it being a Trumpeter are: The bill is massive, long, and flat (not concave); The eye is partially enclosed by the black of the beak and not perched out on the end of the black as in Tundra; Also telling is the way it is holding its neck in this picture. This is a classic trumpeter pose with the head almost appearing to arise out of the back as opposed to rising from the front of the breast. Tundras have a shorter neck and do not do this.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9302\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"trumpeterswan131211fs\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/trumpeterswan131211fs.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>One of the pictures included a mallard and this enabled me to measure the ratio of swan\/mallard body lengths. The value, about 2.6 corresponds to the trumpeter\/mallard ratio and is much much larger than the tundra\/mallard ratio of 2.2. The swan is preening, which appears to be the reason it is out of the water.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9301\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/trumpetermallard131211s.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The U shaped boundary between the forehead and bill (which I thought was definitive) turns out to be found in Trumpeters also, so was not a good guide.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9304\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/trumpeterswan131211ds.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>However, my comments on the final picture still stand. I suggested that\u00a0I might have acted too quickly in choosing the previous day&#8217;s image as my favourite. I think that this was the shot of the day.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9303\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/trumpeterswan131211es2.jpg\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Yesterday I posted a single picture without comment: Shades of white. I had just photographed a swan by the water&#8217;s edge and was so entranced by the beauty of its spread wings that I quickly picked one shot and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=9280\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9280"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9325,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9280\/revisions\/9325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}