Submitted photoDavid J. Holihan shot this photograph of a family of swans Monday afternoon on the Seneca River in Liverpool.
I showed the picture to Laura Erickson, ""The Bird Lady," and former science editor of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. Erickson said they were mute swans, which were introduced into this country from Europe in the late 1800s..
"They compete against our native trumpeter swans," she said. "They're probably the species that figures in "The Ugly Ducking." Hans Christian Andersen was Danish, and the swans in most illustrated versions of his story are mute swans."
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