Swan Safety

Update today Thursday 30th July : Sam seen around the jubilee bridge and then away up Broadhill unsupervised again ! This is the 4th time I have met the dog on it's own in recent weeks! Lovely dog, but where's the owner ?

In addition to fish hooks and line, many other things are also a threat to Swans, the ingestion of lead shot and attacks by predators like dogs, foxes and mink.

Lead shot is used much less nowadays and this has helped the safety of swans.

Carelessness on the part of some people like leaving fishing line laying around, such as the birds nest of fishing nylon I found on the pier today.

Fortunately we don't have a fox problem on our part of the river, but I believe the Swans at Brodie keep going missing and they do have a lot of foxes over there.

A recent change in our swans fortunes has caused a bit of a shortage of weed, the swans main food supply. This happened because of the big River spate last week which washed much of the weed out to sea, the river was also dredged which didn't help either. Even the seaweed that used to be available close to shore has disappeared with the sandbars. This means the Swans are on the lookout for benefactors willing to hand out food, and with 8 of them growing fast this is at a premium.

All the Swans are vulnerable just now because they cant fly, and the cygnets particularly so because they have yet to experience fear and danger.

For this reason I would ask people not to put them at risk from dog attack and feed them when they are in the water. They can move quickly in the water and the cob can takeoff and fly within a yard or two to defend the young if needed.

On land Swans are clumsy and slow, and also gulls can get to the food quicker than them.

Last week I saw a dog about to cross the moat to get at the cygnets, luckily I knew the dogs name and shouted to it, this allowed the cygnets and swans time to stand up and get mobile, and the dog then changed direction. I hope that Sam's owner stops the dog from running around the town unsupervised.

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