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Animal Series
Swan
The graceful winged form of the swan has inspired works of art from fairy tales to ballets, and its profile is recognized immediately by even the most cursory of bird admirers. Now the newest addition to Reaktion’s acclaimed Animal series examines the fascinating story behind this elegant bird.
The natural history of the swan is surprisingly complex, as Peter Young reveals, delving into the bird’s habitat and feeding habits, the physiological details of the eight surviving species and several extinct ones, the bird’s power and endurance, and the formation flying that allows them to conserve energy and fly great distances with speed. Swan gives equal treatment to the long and rich role of the swan in human culture, from the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan to the bird’s portrayal in sculpture, furniture, and brand name logos. Young also details the challenges facing conservation efforts to protect swans from human consumption and material goods.
An engrossing account, Swan will be a welcome addition to the bookshelf of all who admire this beautiful bird.
The natural history of the swan is surprisingly complex, as Peter Young reveals, delving into the bird’s habitat and feeding habits, the physiological details of the eight surviving species and several extinct ones, the bird’s power and endurance, and the formation flying that allows them to conserve energy and fly great distances with speed. Swan gives equal treatment to the long and rich role of the swan in human culture, from the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan to the bird’s portrayal in sculpture, furniture, and brand name logos. Young also details the challenges facing conservation efforts to protect swans from human consumption and material goods.
An engrossing account, Swan will be a welcome addition to the bookshelf of all who admire this beautiful bird.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
224 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2008
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March 28, 2018
"'Finally, we unanimously agreed that the bird would be the mute swan, representing serenity and purity, a bird that has been associated with peace throughout history and myth. The mute swan's range is worldwide. Perhaps its most important characteristic is that it speaks with a soft voice.'"
This quote refers to the choice of the mute swan as the international symbol of peace, based on the universality of its range, its indifference to borders, and its admirable qualities which lead to it being admired across nations and religions. It was initially chosen as an ambassador of peace from the US to Chairman Mao's communist China in the 1960s and has spread its wings of peace throughout the world ever since, with swan rescue and welfare charities receiving support from everyone from the Queen of England to the government of the UAE and India.
This book contains loads of interesting facts about swans, and its focus on the interaction between swans and humans makes the contents of this book unique.
However, the decision to include a chapter about swans as food really upset me. These beautiful birds are protected worldwide for good reason, even the most abundant mute swan was in decline from the start of the Industrial revolution until the early 1980s. These peaceful wild birds are barometers of the health of our wetlands, exist alongside humans without harming modern civilisation, and are protected by law in many countries including the UK where the author lives. "For most people the swan is a desirable bird, worth protecting either legally on in regocnised wetlands. The swan earns respect on its own merits, not out of pity or sentimentality easily bestowed on some wildlife." Perhaps I am particularly sensitive as a vegetarian and long-time swan lover, but some of the arguments in this book go beyond dispassionate reporting of historical uses of swans. "Birds are living creatures, not inanimate targets for missiles." The author gives, in my opinion, far too much credence to the argument that swans should be culled in some areas to benefit people who like to go fishing because the swans eat the same plant matter as fish. This is an extremely petty reason to propose hunting of these beautiful birds, especially when agricultural run-off and overfishing are just two far more common threats to fresh-water fish than competition with swans. Again, the view that large birds such as swans posing a risk to aircraft should be handled by allowing hunting is highly insensitive given that less than 100 years ago, several species of swan were on the brink of extinction. "According to one census, in 1933 there were 71 trumpeter swans breeding in Canada and 50 in the United States." Cheap air-travel is a convenience. Migration is critical to species survival for these swans. Research can be put into studying migration routes, small biplanes can even be used to 'corral' migrating birds to keep them away from major air routes. So much more can be done before we have to resort to persecuting swans. If humans beings cannot live harmoniously with swans, wild creatures which demand so little of us and reward us with their company, what hope is there that we won't turn planet Earth in a decaying heap of industrial waste? These two chapters explain my low star rating for an otherwise interesting book. I can appreciate the ignorant behaviour of previous generations towards nature, but I cannot accept that these are attitudes relevant to life today. Swans are worth so much more to me than their net increased cost on the airline industry.
Right. Now I'm going to talk about all the cool things I learned about my favourite birds, the reason why I read this book in the first place.
Swans really are amazing creatures, with so many rich displays of intelligence in their behaviour. Young swans check the markers on the beaks of other swans when they arrive at a flock to prevent in-breeding. "swans have certain beak details in common with their parents." Also, the name 'mute' swan, which I always assumed referred to the stately reserved sounds swans make in comparison to geese, is supposed to be a corruption of 'sownder' the sound their flapping wings make. "Their noise, made by their stiff outer wing feathers, may be useful for keeping in contact and avoiding collisions during night flying." They're so civilised. In addition to being an emblem of the UK, "since 2002, the mute swan has headed the list of British bird species", as DNA sequencing has revealed that the English mute swan was possibly the first bird to become established in Britain during the ice age. As if we need further proof of the swans' sovereignty over our island.
Swans have been sacred animals to humans since prehistoric times, recorded in"rock drawings on Lake Onga, Finland, and as a Babylonian unit of weight". Their remains were collected as relics in early Britain, a tradition drawn upon by Ian Davie, a modern artist who paints miniatures on swan feathers, always leaving an area of untouched feather which he considers a work of art in its own right.
The ancient Greeks associated swans with Apollo, who was accompanied by a handsom cob when he was conferred his gifts by Zeus. "the swan came to represent the gift of poetry" The association between swans and poetry is clear for anyone who has watched these graceful creatures. A young cygnet who lives in Oxford near me has even come to mirror the rhythm of my footsteps and the rhythm of my hand reaching in and out of the box to throw food to him. But the Greeks also associated swans with prophecy. This still survives to today in "the German expression: mir schwant etwas 'I have an uneasy feeling'" Celtic British communities also revered the swan, seeing these noble birds as the ethereal vessels shepherding human souls to the afterlife. This believe even survived the advent of Christianity in the UK. "Living in the three elements air, earth, and water, the swan is most versatile. It could communicate between the worlds, between person and creature. In Celtic belief a swan could not be harmed as it may embody a loved one's soul." A very similar tale is part of Chinese mythology, in which the souls of those wrongly killed or showing great valour in life are associated with white swans souring away from their tombs. Even in aboriginal Australian myth, the black swan was associated with the displaced souls of men. The serenity of swans has been converted to a kind of spirituality throughout the world.
Right up until the Industrial revolution, swans maintained their mystery. Some naturalists bestowed them with the magic of a phoenix, claiming swans were "'thought to attain the age of three hundred years'". One of the knights associated with Arthurian mythology is Lohengrin, the Swan Knight, who arrives suddenly on a chariot pulled by swans. His story is of a fleeting appearance in the realms of men, as he is compelled to vanish when anyone asks to closely about his past, revealing that like the swan his inner nature can never truly be known. In fact, Lohengrin's story inspired a certain Boston merchant in the US to build the romantic swan boats which have since been widely imitated and appear in E.B. White' The Trumpet of the Swan", a beautiful story of hope in which a trumpeter cygnet finds his voice through music. Swans are loved throughout the world. In Scandanavia, "The swan is the official Nordic ecolabel", representing a healthy environment. In Japan, the visiting whooper swans are extremely popular, and their final weekend in Japan before migrating back to Russia is an annual festival in which "activities include feeding the birds ready for their journey, a photography competition, and a swan impersonation contest." It's heart-warming to see traditions coincide across such very different cultures.
The swan is also, of course, a very literary bird. Perhaps one of its most famous stories is Hans Christian Anderson's The Ugly Duckling, which draws on the mythical transformation associated with swans. I have never truly been able to appreciate that story, as I find cygnets the most charming of all baby birds. Lesser known is Anderson's story The Swan's Nest in which he celebrates other historic Danes who have flown out from Denmark to make the world a better place. One of his Danish 'swans' in this piece is Tyco Brache, the respected astronomer whose data and teaching inspired Kepler. Fifteenth century martyr Jan Hus compared truth that cannot be silenced to a swan: "'Today you are roasting a lean goose - but in a hundred years time a swan will ascend from my ashes that you cannot roast - you will have to listen to him'" Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, most well-known for The Scream also saw the swan as an elusive symbol of good mental health. He incorporated swans into much of his writing and even painted "a scream-like head beneath a swan as its reflection". But my favourite literary swan to appear here was that of Florence Nightingale's sister's quote that she and her family felt: "'they are ducks that have hatched a wild swan'". The absolute love and admiration here is heart-warming.
What I was really surprised to learn was the number of examples of swans inspiring science. I can imagine that if Pavlov started his conditioning experiments with the swans and cygnets in the moat in the Bath Bishop's Palace, we might have discovered conditioning in the 1600s. Swans also inspired some major physics. "When Thomas Young observed the intersecting ripples swans cast on a Cambridge college lake they set him thinking on the nature of light, which he saw as a wave." I can imagine a cob repeatedly gliding past Thomas Young and then calling over to his partner, 'I think they're finally getting it, dear! They're slow, aren't they, these humans?' Louis Pasteur was also inspired by the swan when he developed his 'swan-necked flasks' which trapped contamination from the air in their sinusoidal necks to keep the contents of the flask sterile. Finally, the black swan, not discovered by Europeans until 1697, rocked the field of formal logic. "Aristotle made extensive use of the example of the black swan in Prior Analytics, two books on the laws of syllogism. In this form of argument two propositions or premises contain a middle term and the third proposition is the conclusion" The existence of the black swan is a freeing reminder to question what we assume and imagine wonder beyond the bounds of what we see around us. Nature is plentiful.
The swan represents something noble in human nature. It is a self-sufficient animal devoted to its family in a way that many humans would hope to live up to. There is every reason to treat wild swans with respect. In fact, in all 200 pages of this book, there is only one instance of a swan that I truly believed detrimental to humans: the 1910 Brookes 'swan car' (do look it up), equipped with "a lever-operated beak that hissed and sprayed out water to scatter pedestrians".n Despite this strange, strange product from an eccentric Scottish mind, I still stand by my feeling that swans bring out the best in us.
This quote refers to the choice of the mute swan as the international symbol of peace, based on the universality of its range, its indifference to borders, and its admirable qualities which lead to it being admired across nations and religions. It was initially chosen as an ambassador of peace from the US to Chairman Mao's communist China in the 1960s and has spread its wings of peace throughout the world ever since, with swan rescue and welfare charities receiving support from everyone from the Queen of England to the government of the UAE and India.
This book contains loads of interesting facts about swans, and its focus on the interaction between swans and humans makes the contents of this book unique.
However, the decision to include a chapter about swans as food really upset me. These beautiful birds are protected worldwide for good reason, even the most abundant mute swan was in decline from the start of the Industrial revolution until the early 1980s. These peaceful wild birds are barometers of the health of our wetlands, exist alongside humans without harming modern civilisation, and are protected by law in many countries including the UK where the author lives. "For most people the swan is a desirable bird, worth protecting either legally on in regocnised wetlands. The swan earns respect on its own merits, not out of pity or sentimentality easily bestowed on some wildlife." Perhaps I am particularly sensitive as a vegetarian and long-time swan lover, but some of the arguments in this book go beyond dispassionate reporting of historical uses of swans. "Birds are living creatures, not inanimate targets for missiles." The author gives, in my opinion, far too much credence to the argument that swans should be culled in some areas to benefit people who like to go fishing because the swans eat the same plant matter as fish. This is an extremely petty reason to propose hunting of these beautiful birds, especially when agricultural run-off and overfishing are just two far more common threats to fresh-water fish than competition with swans. Again, the view that large birds such as swans posing a risk to aircraft should be handled by allowing hunting is highly insensitive given that less than 100 years ago, several species of swan were on the brink of extinction. "According to one census, in 1933 there were 71 trumpeter swans breeding in Canada and 50 in the United States." Cheap air-travel is a convenience. Migration is critical to species survival for these swans. Research can be put into studying migration routes, small biplanes can even be used to 'corral' migrating birds to keep them away from major air routes. So much more can be done before we have to resort to persecuting swans. If humans beings cannot live harmoniously with swans, wild creatures which demand so little of us and reward us with their company, what hope is there that we won't turn planet Earth in a decaying heap of industrial waste? These two chapters explain my low star rating for an otherwise interesting book. I can appreciate the ignorant behaviour of previous generations towards nature, but I cannot accept that these are attitudes relevant to life today. Swans are worth so much more to me than their net increased cost on the airline industry.
Right. Now I'm going to talk about all the cool things I learned about my favourite birds, the reason why I read this book in the first place.
Swans really are amazing creatures, with so many rich displays of intelligence in their behaviour. Young swans check the markers on the beaks of other swans when they arrive at a flock to prevent in-breeding. "swans have certain beak details in common with their parents." Also, the name 'mute' swan, which I always assumed referred to the stately reserved sounds swans make in comparison to geese, is supposed to be a corruption of 'sownder' the sound their flapping wings make. "Their noise, made by their stiff outer wing feathers, may be useful for keeping in contact and avoiding collisions during night flying." They're so civilised. In addition to being an emblem of the UK, "since 2002, the mute swan has headed the list of British bird species", as DNA sequencing has revealed that the English mute swan was possibly the first bird to become established in Britain during the ice age. As if we need further proof of the swans' sovereignty over our island.
Swans have been sacred animals to humans since prehistoric times, recorded in"rock drawings on Lake Onga, Finland, and as a Babylonian unit of weight". Their remains were collected as relics in early Britain, a tradition drawn upon by Ian Davie, a modern artist who paints miniatures on swan feathers, always leaving an area of untouched feather which he considers a work of art in its own right.
The ancient Greeks associated swans with Apollo, who was accompanied by a handsom cob when he was conferred his gifts by Zeus. "the swan came to represent the gift of poetry" The association between swans and poetry is clear for anyone who has watched these graceful creatures. A young cygnet who lives in Oxford near me has even come to mirror the rhythm of my footsteps and the rhythm of my hand reaching in and out of the box to throw food to him. But the Greeks also associated swans with prophecy. This still survives to today in "the German expression: mir schwant etwas 'I have an uneasy feeling'" Celtic British communities also revered the swan, seeing these noble birds as the ethereal vessels shepherding human souls to the afterlife. This believe even survived the advent of Christianity in the UK. "Living in the three elements air, earth, and water, the swan is most versatile. It could communicate between the worlds, between person and creature. In Celtic belief a swan could not be harmed as it may embody a loved one's soul." A very similar tale is part of Chinese mythology, in which the souls of those wrongly killed or showing great valour in life are associated with white swans souring away from their tombs. Even in aboriginal Australian myth, the black swan was associated with the displaced souls of men. The serenity of swans has been converted to a kind of spirituality throughout the world.
Right up until the Industrial revolution, swans maintained their mystery. Some naturalists bestowed them with the magic of a phoenix, claiming swans were "'thought to attain the age of three hundred years'". One of the knights associated with Arthurian mythology is Lohengrin, the Swan Knight, who arrives suddenly on a chariot pulled by swans. His story is of a fleeting appearance in the realms of men, as he is compelled to vanish when anyone asks to closely about his past, revealing that like the swan his inner nature can never truly be known. In fact, Lohengrin's story inspired a certain Boston merchant in the US to build the romantic swan boats which have since been widely imitated and appear in E.B. White' The Trumpet of the Swan", a beautiful story of hope in which a trumpeter cygnet finds his voice through music. Swans are loved throughout the world. In Scandanavia, "The swan is the official Nordic ecolabel", representing a healthy environment. In Japan, the visiting whooper swans are extremely popular, and their final weekend in Japan before migrating back to Russia is an annual festival in which "activities include feeding the birds ready for their journey, a photography competition, and a swan impersonation contest." It's heart-warming to see traditions coincide across such very different cultures.
The swan is also, of course, a very literary bird. Perhaps one of its most famous stories is Hans Christian Anderson's The Ugly Duckling, which draws on the mythical transformation associated with swans. I have never truly been able to appreciate that story, as I find cygnets the most charming of all baby birds. Lesser known is Anderson's story The Swan's Nest in which he celebrates other historic Danes who have flown out from Denmark to make the world a better place. One of his Danish 'swans' in this piece is Tyco Brache, the respected astronomer whose data and teaching inspired Kepler. Fifteenth century martyr Jan Hus compared truth that cannot be silenced to a swan: "'Today you are roasting a lean goose - but in a hundred years time a swan will ascend from my ashes that you cannot roast - you will have to listen to him'" Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, most well-known for The Scream also saw the swan as an elusive symbol of good mental health. He incorporated swans into much of his writing and even painted "a scream-like head beneath a swan as its reflection". But my favourite literary swan to appear here was that of Florence Nightingale's sister's quote that she and her family felt: "'they are ducks that have hatched a wild swan'". The absolute love and admiration here is heart-warming.
What I was really surprised to learn was the number of examples of swans inspiring science. I can imagine that if Pavlov started his conditioning experiments with the swans and cygnets in the moat in the Bath Bishop's Palace, we might have discovered conditioning in the 1600s. Swans also inspired some major physics. "When Thomas Young observed the intersecting ripples swans cast on a Cambridge college lake they set him thinking on the nature of light, which he saw as a wave." I can imagine a cob repeatedly gliding past Thomas Young and then calling over to his partner, 'I think they're finally getting it, dear! They're slow, aren't they, these humans?' Louis Pasteur was also inspired by the swan when he developed his 'swan-necked flasks' which trapped contamination from the air in their sinusoidal necks to keep the contents of the flask sterile. Finally, the black swan, not discovered by Europeans until 1697, rocked the field of formal logic. "Aristotle made extensive use of the example of the black swan in Prior Analytics, two books on the laws of syllogism. In this form of argument two propositions or premises contain a middle term and the third proposition is the conclusion" The existence of the black swan is a freeing reminder to question what we assume and imagine wonder beyond the bounds of what we see around us. Nature is plentiful.
The swan represents something noble in human nature. It is a self-sufficient animal devoted to its family in a way that many humans would hope to live up to. There is every reason to treat wild swans with respect. In fact, in all 200 pages of this book, there is only one instance of a swan that I truly believed detrimental to humans: the 1910 Brookes 'swan car' (do look it up), equipped with "a lever-operated beak that hissed and sprayed out water to scatter pedestrians".n Despite this strange, strange product from an eccentric Scottish mind, I still stand by my feeling that swans bring out the best in us.
April 23, 2018
A nice little book about the seven types of swans. Did you know the question of whether we could assume all swans are white was a foundational one for philosophy? I didn't, but I also hadn't seen one of the southern black swans either. England also has some strange laws and I'm not sure I could eat a swan, especially when it's prepared to look life-like. The Swan Car is pretty awesome though.
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