43 Fun Facts About Swan

Which Bavarian castle, dotted with swan motifs, did Ludwig II build in honour of Richard Wagner?

Neuschwanstein Castle was built so the shy king could withdraw from public life, yet it opened to the public seven weeks after he died in 1886.

What is a group of swans called?

A bevy or a wedge: young tundra swans fly south in family groups and stay with their parents through their first winter.

Swans belong to the same bird family as which birds?

Geese: and each summer swans shed their flight feathers, so they cannot fly for weeks until new ones grow.

The English word 'swan' probably comes from an Indo-European root meaning what?

To sound or sing, probably, which would make 'swan song' something of a tautology; German Schwan and Swedish svan share the word.

The ballet solo The Dying Swan was created for which Russian ballerina?

Anna Pavlova is said to have asked for her swan costume as she lay dying.

Where do young mute swans usually live after they leave their parents?

In a flock: they stay among other non-breeding swans until they bond with a mate and look for a territory.

Which species has pink legs, unlike the blackish-grey legs of the rest?

It lives in southern South America; the four subarctic species have black bills with varying yellow.

The fleshy lump at the base of a mute swan's bill is called what?

The knob is bigger on males, which helps tell the sexes apart, since male and female mute swans share the same white plumage.

Apart from Antarctica, which continent has no native breeding swans?

Africa: native mute swans, birds of temperate climates, reach only its far north, and only as winter visitors.

What do swans mainly eat?

Aquatic plants: mute swans graze them so heavily that several studies found they severely thin underwater vegetation where they live.

Which noise does a mute swan usually make first when an intruder comes near?

A loud hiss: and if that fails to drive the intruder off, the swan attacks, striking out with its powerful wings.

Which writer called his circle of glamorous New York socialites his 'swans', then exposed their secrets in print?

Truman Capote's 1975 Esquire story 'La Côte Basque' betrayed their confidences and cost him many of his society friendships.

Whose 1995 Swan Lake famously replaced the ballerina swans with male dancers?

Matthew Bourne's version supplies the final scene of the film Billy Elliot, as the grown-up Billy leaps onto the stage as the Swan.

Which poet wrote 'The Wild Swans at Coole', about counting fifty-nine swans on a lake?

W. B. Yeats recalls that nineteen autumns earlier, before he had finished his first count, the swans suddenly rose and scattered.

Which Hollywood star played a princess in the 1956 film The Swan?

Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier III of Monaco that same year, and gave up acting to become a real princess.

Which author popularised 'black swan' as the name for rare, world-changing surprises?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb borrowed an old saying for the impossible, from when Europeans assumed all swans were white.

Which fairy tale is probably the best-known story about a swan?

Swans also feature in two Wagner operas, Lohengrin and Parsifal, and everywhere as symbols of love and fidelity.

Which fishing item was banned from sale to help protect mute swans on lowland rivers?

Lead weights: the ban on selling them largely solved the lead poisoning that had been killing swans on lowland rivers.

Which author wrote 'The Wild Swans', in which a princess knits nettle shirts to free her brothers?

Hans Christian Andersen's heroine must stay silent while she knits, because one spoken word would kill her brothers.

In Greek myth, Zeus came to which queen in the form of a swan?

Leda, in the most common telling, laid eggs from which Helen of Troy and her siblings hatched, though some versions mention no eggs.

In which Plato dialogue does Socrates say swans rejoice rather than grieve as they die?

Phaedo: in his last hours, Socrates says swans foresee the blessings of another world, so they rejoice more than ever before.

The Children of Lir, turned into swans for 900 years, come from which country's legends?

Ireland: when the spell finally broke, the swans became three feeble old men and a very old woman, who were baptised and died.

In Norse myth, who lives by the sacred well beneath the world tree where the parents of all swans were fed?

The Norns take water and clay from the well every day and sprinkle it over the tree, so that its branches won't wither or rot.

Which composer wrote The Swan of Tuonela, inspired by the epic Kalevala?

Jean Sibelius drew on the hero Lemminkäinen, sent to shoot the swan of Tuonela with a single arrow to win a bride.

The whooper swan is the national bird of which country?

Finland: whooper swans were hunted almost to extinction there, until writer Yrjö Kokko campaigned to save them and numbers recovered.

In Swan Lake, the double role of Odette and Odile represents what?

Good and evil: at the ball, Prince Siegfried is fooled by Odile's likeness to Odette and announces that he will marry her instead.

Who composed the score of Swan Lake?

Tchaikovsky died in November 1893, so he never saw the revised Swan Lake that Petipa and Ivanov staged in 1895.

Swan Lake was premiered in 1877 by which company?

The Bolshoi Ballet premiered it, and soon after, ballerina Sobeshchanskaya apparently got the composer to write her a new pas de deux.

Martin Luther is often depicted with a swan because of a prophecy attributed to which earlier reformer?

Jan Hus was condemned as a heretic at the Council of Constance and burned at the stake there in 1415.

In Hinduism, the swan is the vehicle of which goddess?

Saraswati's swan is said to separate milk from water, a symbol of telling right from wrong; some images give her a peacock instead.

Which poet made the swan the symbol of the Modernismo movement in Spanish poetry?

Rubén Darío's swans came to stand for Modernismo, until Mexican poet Enrique González Martínez broke with it in a sonnet urging poets to wring the swan's neck.

Which two City of London livery companies share ownership of the Thames swans with the Crown?

The tradition of upping on the Thames goes back to the 12th century.

Denmark's national bird, the mute swan, was voted in to replace which bird?

The skylark had been named Denmark's national bird in 1960, until a Danish TV viewers' vote chose the mute swan in 1984.

What colour is a mute swan's beak?

Orange bordered with black, while its white head feathers are often stained by iron in the silt and mud where the swan feeds.

Which Australian city stands on the river Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh named after its black swans?

Perth: de Vlamingh's crew also captured several of the river's black swans to take away with them on the voyage.

In many swan maiden folk tales, how does a man make a swan maiden marry him?

He hides her feather robe: in many tellings she later gets it back, puts it on and flies away.

Which rock band launched its own record label, Swan Song, in 1974?

Led Zeppelin broke up after drummer John Bonham died in 1980, and their label lasted only until 1983.

The trumpeter swan is the heaviest living bird native to which continent?

North America: hunting for meat, feathers and quills nearly wiped the trumpeter out early in the 20th century, but it has since recovered.

Which wood engraver, famous for A History of British Birds, has a swan named after him?

Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds is the book the mistreated young Jane reads in the first chapter of Jane Eyre, happy with it on her knee.

Which playwright did Ben Jonson hail as a 'Sweet Swan' in a 1623 memorial poem?

William Shakespeare got the tribute in the First Folio, in a poem that also teased his 'small Latin and less Greek'.

What is an adult female swan called?

A pen: in trumpeter swans she does most of the incubating, though both parents help to raise the young.

What sound is most associated with mute swans, audible from one to two kilometres away?

The noise is unique to the species and seems to serve as a contact signal between birds in the air.

Which French composer wrote 'The Swan', the famous cello solo from The Carnival of the Animals?

Camille Saint-Saëns feared the comic suite would hurt his serious image, so 'The Swan' was the only part published in his lifetime.