Look out for stately whooper swans as they return to our shores for winter

There is something almost mesmeric about an incoming flight of whooper swans - long necks extended, the synchronised wing beats of the family group digging deep into the cold winter air provide an inspiring combination of power and grace wrapped in a cloak of white.

As the birds approach the loch, the air rings with their bugling "whoop, whoop" call and the rhythmic swish that vibrates from their powerful wings. The elegant swans make a slow turn before descending down onto the water's surface, which erupts into a trail of white spume as they come to rest. Winter has arrived and the whoopers have reclaimed their status as the kings of the lochs.

Whooper swans have poise that few other birds can match. They are much shyer than the mute swan, generally preferring our less disturbed lochs and reservoirs.

Whoopers are mainly winter visitors to our shores, with the first birds arriving in early October from their northern breeding grounds. They are widely distributed in Scotland during the winter months and can be found on a large variety of open freshwater ranging from small lochans and marshland to large lochs. The biggest concentrations are found in north-east Scotland, the Central Belt and across to the Solway Firth. Family parties of four or five birds are common, but squadrons of 20 or more are not unusual, especially on favoured sites such as Loch Leven in Perth and Kinross. The Loch of Strathbeg near Fraserburgh is another important wintering site for the birds.

Accounts of early naturalists show that there was a small but well-established breeding population of whooper swans in Orkney but this died out in the late 1700s. Today perhaps only five pairs of whoopers breed in Scotland in any given year, usually in Shetland. The whoopers that arrive in Scotland every winter come mostly from Iceland, although a few may also reach our shores from breeding populations in northern Norway and Russia.

The whooper can easily be differentiated from the mute swan by its sloping yellow bill with a black base. The resident and often quite tame mute has an orange bill with a black knob at the top and its wing profile at rest is much more rounded than the whooper. If a swan swims up to you in the course of a loch-side walk, then it will almost certainly be a mute.

Whoopers feed extensively on aquatic weeds, mostly obtained from the shallow bottom of a loch, by upending their bodies; their long necks enabling them to exploit parts of the loch bed that ducks are unable to reach. During the daytime the swans will also disperse from their lochs to feed on surrounding farmland. They are prolific grazers and favour feeding on harvest waste potatoes, carrots and on the new shoot growth of winter cereals.

One of the best places to see whoopers in Scotland is at the RSPB Vane Farm nature reserve at Loch Leven. Here the swans like to roost at night on the flood meadows at the edge of the loch, and during the day will feed in the shallows or fly out to nearby fields.

Last winter there was a record count of 354 swans at the reserve, which represented six per cent of the total Scottish wintering population. According to reserve information warden, Colin Shaw, the elegant whoopers are a big draw for visitors to Vane Farm.

"They are certainly one of the main attractions to the reserve during the winter. They are spectacular birds and never fail to impress," he says.

"This is an excellent time of year to visit the reserve with the increased numbers of ducks, geese and swans on the loch making it a great day out."

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• This article was first published in The Scotsman on November 6, 2010