Mute swans are not native to the western hemisphere, but a family of four (cob, pen, and two cygnets) lives on a 25+ acre reservoir very near my home near Placerville, CA USA. Mute swans are not mute. They make a guttural sound infrequently. Their wing span can reach eight feet!!! They are aggressive and can be dangerous. (Very recently a fellow in Illinois whose job was to tend to mute swans brought into a golf course to control/eliminate Canada geese was attacked by mute swan(s), knocked off his kayak,and drowned. "My" mute swans are VERY tolerant of me. I have spent time on a shore of the reservoir so near them that I could not focus on them. The minimum focus distance for my 300mm f/4.5 is 6.6 feet!!!) This image was shot with a Carl Zeiss T* Circular Polarizing Filter attached to my lens.

[pntxjack]

By the way---mute swans are so bright/white, that I have to under expose by a minimum of one full stop to capture any detail in the feathers, sometimes more.