Nona Credille @ hcredille@provide.net
I don't feel like writing about swans when there are no swans to write about, but I'll go back a few years and recall when Caesar and Cleotoo had a very good year and produced more cygnets (8) than Greenook Lake could accommodate. Now I have five books on swans, have read them, and came away with the impression that cygnets are totally dependent on the adult birds for their survival. They need to be taught what foods to eat, how to groom properly, how to fly and when to migrate. And so, shortly after the cygnets hatched I noticed that one was being cruelly rejected by his peers. He was pecked, and chased and forced to remain alone. Caesar and Cleotoo seemed indifferent to the aggressive behavior of the other seven cygnets. For the life of me I could not see a single flaw that would indicate this poor bird was defective. His head was on straight; his eyes were not brady; his fluffy down was perfectly fluffed. All in all, he was a handsome little critter, so why was he being abused?
I came to the conclusion that, like birds in a crowded nest, one gets the heave-ho and it's the little ones themselves who do the shoving - not the adults. I determined to let nature take its course and not isolate this very young bird because I had read my five books and knew positively that he would not survive. A while later, to my chagrin, I discovered a single, beat-up, little swan on Bridgeway Lake. A young "someone" who hadn't read my five books, did the obvious thing by snatching the cygnet from his tormentors, and then, to make matters worse, he snatched a second bird to keep the first one company. Now there were two very small cygnets, with no adult protection, about to starve or become snapping turtle entrées. I was plenty irritated but also keenly interested in monitoring their progress. To my amazement, they survived and thrived and by late September they were flying and at the end of October they flew off as nice as they please.
I haven't burned my five books but they are getting rather dusty.