Hey, guess what?  There are black swans!  According to the Wikipedia article, Cygnus atratus are from Australia.  I took these pictures of one in Rancho Santa Fe, CA.

I poked around Wikipedia for something interesting.  Black Swan Pas de Deux is from the third scene of Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake.  "In ballet, a pas de deux (French, step/dance for two) is a duet in which ballet steps are performed together."  Well, I thought that was relevant because these two swans were mirroring each other’s actions for a while.  You can see in two of the pictures below, but they were synchronized preening for several minutes.  Who knew it was a pas de deux?

The black one was hanging out at the boat ramp as Jen and I walked around the lake.  We were told its mate had been eaten by a coyote.  How sad!

Kind of shy, but seemed to appreciate the company.  The white one swam over while I was taking pictures.

Of course, I couldn’t resist making LOL SWANS!  Haha…

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Nature, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.