Eight cygnets were hatched on May 11 and they were as cute as fuzz covered buttons. There was only one thing wrong - too many cygnets and not enough edible stuff to sustain them.
“Cob” had to follow his natural instincts and sacrifice some of the young in order to feed the rest. He singled them out one at a time and in a few days reduced the size of his brood from eight to four. It wasn’t a matter of culling out the weak because all eight were good, vigorous birds, so Cob’s only reason for cannibalizing his own family was to adjust its size to fit the environment or maybe there were too many male birds and he didn’t want the competition next year?????
It seems like a very cruel thing to do, but to a parent bird, natural law would mandate that four well fed cygnets have a better chance of growing up to reproduce their kind than eight poorly developed birds.
In looking at our weed filled lakes you would think our swans could raise fifty fat cygnets. The nonedible vegetation has become so abundant as to prevent the growth of necessary food for our water fowl. For the first time in our 47 years of swan care have the birds found it necessary to walk from Greenook Lake to Bridgeway Lake in search of more food.
I don’t know what a swan’s favorite food is, but it certainly is not milfoil. The Huron River, in our area, is looking extremely weedy this year and I have noticed a paucity of swans.I visited North Lake recently because I read that they are preparing to do battle with their milfoil and I counted one swan pair with one cygnet in tow. It seems we are being choked with noxious weeds with no redeeming features that I can think of and the wildlife is having a hard time competing.
