@Lota lota yes these are visitors, part of the group wintering at WWT Slimbridge. The wintering group have been steadily reducing over the last few years with 87 on site this year, the lowest number since 1964/5.
Much larger numbers of the swans (many of whom are ringed and tracked through the monitoring projects) are now wintering in Denmark, Netherlands, Germany etc now the temperatures in winter are rising and they don't have to fly as far (7k+ birds counted). Some of our Slimbridge visitors are now older swans who have been visiting for many years (Winkey is the eldest repeat visitor now at 27) along with their siblings and older offspring.
No new cygnets arrived this year at Slimbridge at all.
We still maintain a good number of visiting Whoopers in the UK, but it is possible we could see comparatively few Bewicks and they become a much rarer sight than they were as time goes on.
More than 10,000 Bewicks have wintered at Slimbridge since counts started.
As of yesterday when I visited, there were a couple of Bewicks left on the reserve with most having started their migration home already.
