| Snake | Swan | Porcupine |
| Ξ Poem | Swan Notes | Song ♫ |
swim: The stately swimming of the swan, gliding ever so gracefully through the water with its neck perfectly recurved in a twenty-three-segment-smooth ‘S’ (compared to a mere seven cervical vertebrae in mammals), and its huge wings folded back with a trailing ruffle of feathers, is a breathtaking sight.
sing: Although the mute swan, as its name implies, does not sing at all, the other species do. Trumpeter swans and whistler or tundra swans utter a wild whooping call during flight that can be hauntingly beautiful.
swing: Despite their large wingspan of up to two and half meters and powerful flight musculature, swans are such heavy birds, weighing nearly fifteen kilograms, that they need a long runway to take off and land. Once in the air, however, they fly with graceful ease, speeding along at up to ninety kilometers per hour.
so long: Most swans are migratory fowl, flying northward (poleward) in the spring and southward in the fall, some covering thousands of kilometers, usually in stages of 500 kilometers or less. They fly day and night, but usually stay down during inclement weather.
For more information on swans, see the Wikipedia Swan article.