Feathered Friends in Denmark

The Great Tit, a bird that looks like a Dr. Seuss illustration, didn't want its picture taken, but it's still my favorite European bird so far. Denmark's elegant national bird, the Mute Swan (grey when a juvenile and white when all grown), seems to be everywhere we look. This Hooded Crow posed on a cannon at Hamlet's Castle and the Eurasian Coot enjoyed the moat, while a gray Jackdaw struck its pose by Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen... lots of castles here! The Magpie showed me its irridescent feathers in a Copenhagen park, the Great Cormorants roosted in a marina, and the dark pheasant surprised us when we saw about a hundred running around on the tiny island of Veno. Failing to find it in my field guide to European birds, we learned the "Melanistic Mutant Pheasant" is raised to run wild just on that one island.