Introduction to Swan Lake: Whenever spring comes, the ice and snow melt and everything revives, large numbers of swans from India and southern Africa fly over the mountains in groups and come to Swan Lake to live and breed, in the warm sunshine. Below, the lake, skylight, cloud shadows, and swans form a picture in which "a piece of water soaks into the blue sky without a trace, and the mountains and water forms form a picture of their own."