Swan Trivia
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43 free Swan trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Swans are the largest waterfowl and among the heaviest birds that can still fly, and this quiz covers them from biology to ballet. It starts with the six living species and their odd geography: white in the north, black and black-necked in the south, the mute swan's closest cousin turning out to be Australia's black swan; the names cob, pen and cygnet; the knob on the bill; the serrated 'teeth'; how faithful the famous pair bonds really are; and the extinct Maltese giant that stood taller than the island's dwarf elephants. It then moves to the swan in human life: the Crown's swans and Swan Upping on the Thames, Elizabethan baked swan, the trumpeter's rescue from fewer than 70 birds, the black swan on Western Australia's flag, Denmark's and Finland's national birds, Zeus and Leda, the Children of Lir, the swans of the Well of Urd, Jan Hus's prophecy about Luther, Saraswati's mount, Swan Lake's failed premiere and Odette and Odile. Easy questions ask what a baby swan is called and which swan is black; hard ones want incubation periods, divorce rates and Latin poets. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on swans and the species, ceremonies and works involved, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Our Birds quiz goes wider.
30 of 43 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Bavarian castle, dotted with swan motifs, did Ludwig II build in honour of Richard Wagner?
Neuschwanstein Castle
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.
Q 02What is a group of swans called?
A bevy or a wedge
A bevy or a wedge: young tundra swans fly south in family groups and stay with their parents through their first winter.
Q 03Swans belong to the same bird family as which birds?
Geese
Geese: and each summer swans shed their flight feathers, so they cannot fly for weeks until new ones grow.
Q 04The English word 'swan' probably comes from an Indo-European root meaning what?
To sound or sing
To sound or sing, probably, which would make 'swan song' something of a tautology; German Schwan and Swedish svan share the word.
Q 05The ballet solo The Dying Swan was created for which Russian ballerina?
Anna Pavlova
Anna Pavlova is said to have asked for her swan costume as she lay dying.
Q 06Where do young mute swans usually live after they leave their parents?
In a flock
In a flock: they stay among other non-breeding swans until they bond with a mate and look for a territory.
Q 07Which species has pink legs, unlike the blackish-grey legs of the rest?
The black-necked
It lives in southern South America; the four subarctic species have black bills with varying yellow.
Q 08The fleshy lump at the base of a mute swan's bill is called what?
The knob
The knob is bigger on males, which helps tell the sexes apart, since male and female mute swans share the same white plumage.
Q 09Apart from Antarctica, which continent has no native breeding swans?
Africa
Africa: native mute swans, birds of temperate climates, reach only its far north, and only as winter visitors.
Q 10What do swans mainly eat?
Aquatic plants
Aquatic plants: mute swans graze them so heavily that several studies found they severely thin underwater vegetation where they live.
Q 11Which noise does a mute swan usually make first when an intruder comes near?
A loud hiss
A loud hiss: and if that fails to drive the intruder off, the swan attacks, striking out with its powerful wings.
Q 12Which writer called his circle of glamorous New York socialites his 'swans', then exposed their secrets in print?
Truman Capote
Truman Capote's 1975 Esquire story 'La Côte Basque' betrayed their confidences and cost him many of his society friendships.
Q 13Whose 1995 Swan Lake famously replaced the ballerina swans with male dancers?
Matthew Bourne
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.
Q 21In which Plato dialogue does Socrates say swans rejoice rather than grieve as they die?
Phaedo
Phaedo: in his last hours, Socrates says swans foresee the blessings of another world, so they rejoice more than ever before.
Q 22The Children of Lir, turned into swans for 900 years, come from which country's legends?
Ireland
Ireland: when the spell finally broke, the swans became three feeble old men and a very old woman, who were baptised and died.
Q 23In Norse myth, who lives by the sacred well beneath the world tree where the parents of all swans were fed?
The Norns
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.
Q 14Which poet wrote 'The Wild Swans at Coole', about counting fifty-nine swans on a lake?
W. B. Yeats
W. B. Yeats recalls that nineteen autumns earlier, before he had finished his first count, the swans suddenly rose and scattered.
Q 15Which Hollywood star played a princess in the 1956 film The Swan?
Grace Kelly
Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier III of Monaco that same year, and gave up acting to become a real princess.
Q 16Which author popularised 'black swan' as the name for rare, world-changing surprises?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Taleb borrowed an old saying for the impossible, from when Europeans assumed all swans were white.
Q 17Which fairy tale is probably the best-known story about a swan?
The Ugly Duckling
Swans also feature in two Wagner operas, Lohengrin and Parsifal, and everywhere as symbols of love and fidelity.
Q 18Which fishing item was banned from sale to help protect mute swans on lowland rivers?
Lead weights
Lead weights: the ban on selling them largely solved the lead poisoning that had been killing swans on lowland rivers.
Q 19Which author wrote 'The Wild Swans', in which a princess knits nettle shirts to free her brothers?
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen's heroine must stay silent while she knits, because one spoken word would kill her brothers.
Q 20In Greek myth, Zeus came to which queen in the form of a swan?
Leda
Leda, in the most common telling, laid eggs from which Helen of Troy and her siblings hatched, though some versions mention no eggs.
Q 24Which composer wrote The Swan of Tuonela, inspired by the epic Kalevala?
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius drew on the hero Lemminkäinen, sent to shoot the swan of Tuonela with a single arrow to win a bride.
Q 25The whooper swan is the national bird of which country?
Finland
Finland: whooper swans were hunted almost to extinction there, until writer Yrjö Kokko campaigned to save them and numbers recovered.
Q 26In Swan Lake, the double role of Odette and Odile represents what?
Good and evil
Good and evil: at the ball, Prince Siegfried is fooled by Odile's likeness to Odette and announces that he will marry her instead.
Q 27Who composed the score of Swan Lake?
Tchaikovsky
Tchaikovsky died in November 1893, so he never saw the revised Swan Lake that Petipa and Ivanov staged in 1895.
Q 28Swan Lake was premiered in 1877 by which company?
The Bolshoi Ballet
The Bolshoi Ballet premiered it, and soon after, ballerina Sobeshchanskaya apparently got the composer to write her a new pas de deux.
Q 29Martin Luther is often depicted with a swan because of a prophecy attributed to which earlier reformer?
Jan Hus
Jan Hus was condemned as a heretic at the Council of Constance and burned at the stake there in 1415.
Q 30In Hinduism, the swan is the vehicle of which goddess?
Saraswati
Saraswati's swan is said to separate milk from water, a symbol of telling right from wrong; some images give her a peacock instead.