Comments on: What’s Wrong With Mute Swans?

By: Clara Eisinger

Clara Eisinger — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:02:54 +0000

Haha, I don’t envy that job.

By: Kate St. John

Kate St. John — Thu, 31 May 2012 22:00:22 +0000

One of the most effective swan population control measures is to addle their eggs so they won’t hatch but I hear it requires people who aren’t afraid of being attacked by the birds.

By: Clara Eisinger

Clara Eisinger — Thu, 31 May 2012 14:25:55 +0000

When I was very young, I went to Germany with my parents. I have only intermittently clear memories of that first trip, but perhaps the clearest was of a huge white bird standing in front of me, about my height, looking just like the protagonist in “The Ugly Duckling.” I reached out to stroke its orange beak and–
Snap!
Fortunately, I had good reflexes and withdrew my hand in time to avoid a nip. My parents thought the whole incident was hilarious and a series of startled-looking photos of five-year-old me being attacked by a mute swan cropped up in the family photo album. Still, the incident frightened me and I was more cautious around large birds afterward.
I never saw another mute swan until I studied abroad in Britain many years later. Then, I made a point of courting Hyde Park swans’ attentions, bringing them ice cream cone fragments (which they took, albeit disdainfully) right from my hand and taking pictures of them nuzzling each other with curved necks. When I left London, I thought I wouldn’t see another swan–until the following year, during a Finger Lakes wine tour in New York, when an employee of one of the wineries proudly pointed out the pair kept in an ornamental pond on the premises.
The point of all this blabber? Swans are complicated creatures–in Europe, they’re beautiful, though dangerous, and in North America, they obviously don’t belong. I don’t particularly want to kill them all, yet you’d think that people would know about ecology to stop introducing European animals into places where they will always remain “the Ugly Duckling,” no matter what they grow up to look like.

By: Marge V.

Marge V. — Thu, 31 May 2012 13:54:03 +0000

Great article, Kate.
Remember when that lone Sandhill Crane was up in Peanut (Derry area) a few years ago and some of us went up to watch and take its picture. On one of my following visits to that area since I felt it is such a LOVELY place, I was calmly walking around the paved path when the Mute Swan pair that seem to live there came out of the water and began checking the grass (maybe for tidbits to eat?). One came up to the path and came right up to me, looking rather agitated, so I proceeded to walk a little faster away from it. Not satisfied for some reason it ran in front of me came up to me and grabbed my knee in its VERY strong beak. I shook my leg and ran.

Then there is the story about the pair of Mute Swans at Rosston on the Allegheny that were shot for NO reason by two young kids just for kicks.
Such lovely swans (love all swan species, tho’) but still “wild” creatures.

Nice photo from a very good young birder/photographer : )