Last year I spotted a black swan flying by together with a group ordinary mute swans. At that time I wrongly assumed it to be a common mute swan with melanism.
It took a whole year until I saw another black swan at the Großer Bischofsweiher. This time, however, I searched the web and realized my fallacy: Black swans (Cygnus atratus) are a separate species and not native to Germany, but some abandoned and/or feral individuals or small groups of them can be sighted in Europe.
This January, we had freezing temperatures here in Franconia for a comparatively long period of time and fortunately, we had some snowfall too. Ice and snow allow one to take clean and simple photos. I like this style. So, together with the flexibility of working from home (one of the few positive consequences of COVID-19), I took my chance and went out to the local ponds as often as I could. It was on one of these trips that I saw my second black swan. The light was almost gone, so I decided to return to the site the next morning.
This led to a couple of more visits to that location. The swan stayed around the only ice-free spot of the great pond the whole time. As the swan was quite tame, I was able to take some portraits and a few abstract close up shots.
Several times the mute swans on the pond and the black swan had a brawl. Most of the time, the black swan was the aggressor. To me as a human, the black swan looked like an excluded child on the schoolyard who wants to play with the other children, but is repelled, and thus gets angry and lives the life of a bully. With this in mind, if you look at the first image of the collection below, you might see a jealous black swan looking at the chummy group of mute swans.
On one particular day, the weather was very harsh. In addition to the cold temperatures, the waterfowl had to endure waves and strong winds. I think that I was able to capture this mood in one of my photos, it shows the swimming black swan fighting the elements.
During those winterly weeks, I also photographed other birds, such as grey herons and great egrets. I also spotted some wood ducks and mandarin ducks. Later, I was able to get some decent photos of them. You can see some of them in my main gallery.