Swan Lake: An Irish Ballet

The survey of wild swans is a study of their social family life over years to describe their annual circle of mating, nesting, feeding, caring, and protecting the cygnets. Swans live in monogamy and stay on lakes they choose for life. It was therefore possible to give them names and watch their family fate, which is at great risk for the young baby swans to survive the many attacks of all kinds of predators. The book contains over 160 photo documents of all the important steps of growing up a family with so much intensive care of the parents, which was so far unknown. It is a wonderful performance of love, beauty, and unfortunately drama included.

Dr. Gunter Rau, retired museum director and university lecturer in Germany, is author of many books and articles about archeology, ancient glass, social history, and anthology. His latest publications are about protection of wildlife, survey and studies of wild swans in Ireland, his second residence.