{"id":182,"date":"2004-03-31T17:59:40","date_gmt":"2004-03-31T21:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2004\/03\/31\/swans\/"},"modified":"2004-03-31T17:59:40","modified_gmt":"2004-03-31T21:59:40","slug":"swans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2004\/03\/31\/swans\/","title":{"rendered":"Swans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a360'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Over the weekend, I biked out past Watertown into the Charles River Reservation.  A nice ride, though I was heavy disappointed that the river trails end so close to the city.  I saw tons of Canada geese, and a few much larger white birds with black bills.  The only word I could come up with for them was &#8220;swan&#8221;, but I thought we didn&#8217;t have those in America.<\/p>\n<p>Turns out we do!  Based on a couple minutes&#8217; desultory internet research, I believe that what I saw were <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mute_Swan\">Mute Swans<\/a>, <i>cygnus olor<\/i>.  I take the Latin to mean &#8220;swanny swan&#8221;.  They&#8217;re originally Eurasian, but since they&#8217;re sightly they get imported places to purty up ponds and such.  The Swan Boats at Boston Common look to be modeled after <i>cygnus olor<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know how or when I started thinking such a crazy thing as &#8220;ain&#8217;t no swans in America&#8221;.  I&#8217;ve seen these birds all my life, and no doubt called them swans.<\/p>\n<p>They are beautiful.  I recall reading someone in Spanish class, some exponent of naturalism or some shit (not a naturalist!), suggesting that one &#8220;tuerce el cuello al cisne&#8221;.  I wouldn&#8217;t like to do that.  I&#8217;ll torque <i>your<\/i> collar, sissy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the weekend, I biked out past Watertown into the Charles River Reservation. A nice ride, though I was heavy disappointed that the river trails end so close to the city. I saw tons of Canada geese, and a few much larger white birds with black bills. The only word I could come up with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}