This was taken in response to the Travel Photo Challenge: Couples

This pair of swans looked so in love that I couldn’t resist snapping them. At one point their two necks formed a love heart, but it was past in an instant and this is the shot I got. The sharp-eyed among you will notice that in fact I have posted a couple of shots, of the same picture…..I just couldn’t decide which exposures I liked best. I think the first one is more moody, but the second one feels more love infused! Do you have a preference?

Apparently the root of the word swan, means to sing, which makes the name ‘mute swan’ even more confusing for me. There is an old legend however that these swans sing just before they die…hence swan song…..very cheery. On a more romantic note, they mostly mate for life, so this might be a long-established middle-aged couple taking some quality love time together.

What I didn’t know, until a hasty google search, was that swans are one of the oldest living birds on the planet. Fossils of swans very similar to modern Mute Swans have been found all over Europe, which may explain their link with longevity in many European myths. In ‘The Wooing of Etain’ the fairy king transforms himself, and Ireland’s most beautiful woman, into swans, so they can escape from the King of Ireland, and in the Norse Prose Edda we find Swan Maidens. The Celtic myth, the Children of Lir also features children enchanted into swans by their wicked stepmother. Lots of enchantments of love and hate swirl around the swans.

I find them spell binding, and can watch the ‘bevy’, which live on St Margaret’s Loch in Holyrood Park, Edinburgh, for hours. My Granny used to take me to feed them as a little girl, so I find myself not only transported into the world of fairytale and myth, but back into my own childhood. It’s a potent combination and for me there is definitely something otherworldly and timeless about these majestic birds.