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Mute swans are not native to North America, but wild populations are widely established; the two birds at the bottom of the page are a wild pair. The rest of the pictures show captive birds, with clipped wings, part of a population that has lived for decades on the Avon River in Stratford, Ontario, home of the famous theater festival. A friend of mine, told I was taking my camera with me to Stratford to photograph the swans, suggested that captive swan photography was maybe "a bit kitschy." Indeed, but I'm a sucker for avian kitsch. The Stratford swans are captive, but they breed and raise young, and the two males in the first pictures are rivals engaged in an agonistic ritual that can erupt into violence. |
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