Swans, majestic, beautiful and graceful. Swans in flight--swans cruising low, pumping, through the air, close overhead, are magical, awesome indescribable. .
A jaded birder and photographer once spent hours trying to get close to Tundra Swans. It was a windy winter day along the North Carolina coast at the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. A fantastic place with fantastic creatures. Flocks of thousands of Red-head Ducks, and American Avocets, White Pelicans, and Tundra Swans bobbed on the surface of wind rippled ponds, and waded and rested on the shores, and occasionally, there would be Tundra Swans in flight. Never mind the birds being too far away, or the light not being right, the heavy lens followed them from distant horizon, to only a little closer, and then to the other horizon. The camera shutter clanking all the while, and adrenaline and cold chill trying to shake the aim. His eyes watered in the cold air, squinting into the viewfinder, he was possessed, drugged by a primordial vision, infused with Japanese machinery. Those few fly-by's, those distant swans faintly bugling against the January sky, made return trips to places with swans happen. Many more swans, and some flocks of Snow Goose, would speckle the dark and shimmering waters, and inspire, and rekindle a deep affinity to those things feathered and free. As great as this was, this would-be birder-photographer would not fathom, that such beast could be viewed and photographed at a whim, and at a range too close for the heaviest but still modest lens in his arsenal. And with the ease of shooting fish in a barrel, if that were your thing, a person with a moderate camera, and modest 100-300 zoom, could capture amongst the most astonishing of mother natures offerings. And this would-be photographer, might stand at several locations in the world to experience such grandeur, but one such place, is at the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, and the birds above, are ignoring a lens waving biped at Pungo Lake. The scene is one of swans bugling and taking off from Pungo Lake, even at several hundred yards, on a calm day you can hear their big black feet slapping the water as they clear the surface.

   Tundra Swans are social birds, though as winter progresses the family groups of two adults and 2 to 3 younger more brownish birds seem to go their separate ways. The adults however pair for life, and like other swans, geese and ducks, the Tundra Swans have a strong tendency to flock. Pairs and un-paired alike congregate, to join others in a routine or daily ritual of heading off to feed, to forage and to return. The sky becomes animated as lines and Vs, form and head off in search of food, safety, more swans.
   These are impressive flying machines, with a sense of heft, of mass and strength. They are not butterflies, not flitting songbirds, aloft and played by the breeze, but rather more akin to thoroughbreds, or to aircraft.
    The mp3 audio file imbedded in this page gives a hint at what it is like to hear swans fly over close. There is the sound of pinions, of flight feathers flexing as the force of muscle and bone press against air. There is also the sound of lungs and air sacs filling and emptying, of forced breathing, and always, the sporadic bugling, evocative, as it reverberates off the expanse of the pocosin. The recording was made with a pair of microphones partially protected from gusting winds on a February day in 2008 at Pungo Lake. There is a constant low distant rumble of wind. The birds take a while to pass overhead, and the headwind they worked against is to thank for it.