Scientific name:
Cygnus

Natural spread:
global occurrences

the biggest geese and biggest representatives of its order at all is the 6 types of the swans. Hump-swans become the longest and heaviest under them on the other hand. All swans have very long necks and only short legs with big feet. The Dunenjungen (Nestflüchter) are colored light-gray or white, during swans in the youth-dress more or less brightly - or dark brown feathered is ("the ugly young duckling").

Types The 4 types of the northern Erdhalbkugel have a pure-white plumage as adult birds; they differ externally merely in its size, neck, beak-coloring and some behaviors (attitude of the neck and the wing, walk). As smallest type, it broods approximately 1,2 m long and 4,5-8,2 kg heavy dwarf-swan (Cygnus bewickii) in the Tundrengebieten of the northern Eurasia, while the somewhat bigger Pfeifschwan (C). columbianus, the arctic tundras of the northern North America (eastward as far as to the Hudsonbay) lives in. Many ornithologists grasp these two types with another form from North-Siberia (C). columbianus jankowskii, that differs only through form and color of its beak of the dwarf-swan, in a common type, C. columbianus, together.

The American trumpeter-swan (C). buccinator, after the hump-swan the biggest type (until 13 kg of weight and approximately 1,6 m of length) of the swans, often is looked at as subtype of the Eurasian Singschwans.

Live on the southern hemisphere the fully black Australian mourning-swan as well as the 1-1,2 m big black-neck-swan (C). melanocoryphus, that is native as far as to South-Argentina and South-Chile on the Andes-seas and at South America's coasts of Brazil's south. The black-neck-swans have a fleshy hump as single type besides the hump-swan at the upper base the blue-dreads strongly and more beak bluish, that develops with male birds, particularly during the incubation, is colored. Outside the brood-period and with the females, the hump is red. The black head and neck-plumage (interrupted only by a narrow white strip from the eye to the rear-head) appears only in the plumage of adult swans. The 4-7 Dunenjungen, in 34-36 days only of the female erbrütet, carry a dense, white Dunenkleid and become (as with the hump-swan) gehudert in the back-plumage of the alto-birds initially and around-carried on the water.