2024

Auburndale Park, Newton, Massachusetts

For my birthday, me and my mom went to Newton to go birding. We were mostly focused on the swans that were there, especially since they had their cygnet children with them.

A bunch of swans and cygnets all drinking. Swans have to be some of Mom's favorite birds, and it was a challenge seeing just how close we could get to take these pictures. (We never got attacked. We were just worried they would swim away!)

The mallards were here too, of course. We never saw any ducklings, though.

Beautiful amazing song sparrow picture. Look at them, so adventurous...

It can be easy to forget just how big swans are because they rarely stand up on land. A lot of people with big lawns have tried various tactics to keep animals off of their precious, uh... grass?... such as fake coyotes. It doesn't faze the swans.

A swan with two more cygnets. I was really interested in the one on the left, because unlike all the other cygnets we had seen that day, it was leucistic! It turns out that this is caused by the "Polish swan" color morph, which is only present in mute swans with a history of domestication.