In many instances, the mother swan is the primary care giver. The male will hang around to protect the family, but as far as teaching the young swans how to feed, bathe, preen and dive for food this is mom's primary responsibility. Most of the time, males will just patrol the territory while mom goes out with the youngsters. Now, having said this, we know of a couple of instances, where the mom went away due to being scared by humans or predators, and the male actually went to the young birds and stayed with them until mom settled down and reunited with the family. The Regal Swan
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