Laulujoutsen/whooper swan 🇫🇮 / Sony α55

It's Independence day here in Finland! So here's our national bird, The Whooper swan!

The mute swan territory fight. The Finnoo bird basin in Espoo was for many years the summer home for the same mute swan pair. In the spring 2015 the pair was already nesting, when one of them died, most likely because of the territory fight. The other one left the nest, but stayed in the basin over the summer. In the next spring a new pair took over the basin and everything was calm. However, a year ago there was a dramatic territory fights, which lasted several week and surprisingly also a whooper swan pair was involved. Four swans were killed in the fight. This spring has started also aggressively. There have been several fights and also a whooper swan pair has occasionally been involved. The pictures are from Sunday, May 6, when three mute swan pairs, i.e. six swans were taking part in the fight, which lasted several hours. It calmed down in the afternoon and the coming days will show the final result.

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The Republic of Finland turns 100 years old this year, so here’s the President of Finland riding a whooper swan and firing off a Suomi Konepistooli SMG.