Schwäne (Ausnahme: Höckerschwäne) Vorarlberg

The Cygnus genus is represented in Germany, Austria and Switzerland by three species that differ clearly in size, bill pattern and legal status. The mute swan (Cygnus olor), 140 to 160 cm long and weighing 9 to 12 kg, is Central Europe's largest breeding bird. Adults carry an orange-red bill with a black basal knob that is markedly larger in males. Juveniles are grey-brown in their first winter and lack a pronounced knob. The whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is of similar size but has no knob, a more elongated head and a wedge-shaped, predominantly yellow bill with a black tip, the yellow typically extending beyond the nostril. The Bewick's swan (Cygnus columbianus bewickii) is the smallest of the three, more compact, with a shorter neck and a noticeably smaller yellow patch on the bill. All three species are pure white as adults.

Their habitat is standing and slow-flowing waters with rich submerged vegetation, plus coastal marshes, floodplains and brackish zones, and harvested fields in the wider surroundings during winter. Mute swans breed across Central Europe on eutrophic lakes, park and urban waters and behave mostly as residents or short-distance migrants. Whooper and Bewick's swans breed almost exclusively in the northern and Siberian taiga and tundra and reach the DACH region primarily as winter visitors, concentrating in the North Sea coastal marshes, the Emsland, the Eider-Treene-Sorge lowlands and large inland water bodies of northern Germany. Swans feed mainly on aquatic plants, seeds and winter cereals, upending to reach depths of about 70 cm. Mute swans are strongly territorial during the breeding season and pair for life.

The German mute swan population is reported by the Deutscher Jagdverband at a long-term stable level of roughly 10,500 to 14,500 birds. Whooper and Bewick's swans arrive in smaller but, on a European scale, important wintering numbers, and the Bewick's swan is listed as a species of national responsibility by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation. Protection status: all three species are specially protected under § 7 (2) No. 13 BNatSchG, with whooper and Bewick's swans additionally listed in Annex I of the EU Birds Directive and outside the scope of hunting law. The mute swan is listed in the Federal Hunting Act, with state-specific season regulation and full year-round closure in several federal states. Confident species identification before any shot is mandatory, since misidentifying a whooper or Bewick's swan constitutes a breach of nature conservation law.