The Mute Swan, Beautiful and "Prohibited" in New York
My daughter goes to the beach just about any day a thunderstorm doesn't prevent that recreation. Rain is not a disincentive, as long as there are no booming clouds overhead. A couple of weeks ago she told me, after one of her beach expeditions, "The swans are back. Now they have babies!"
I was surprised that this was the first year she had seen babies with the long-established swan pair. Now I understand why. These birds are not welcome in New York State, and there is a program afoot to prevent eggs from hatching. As a matter of fact measures are also in place to make the swans sterile.
Here is a picture she shot of the swan family that day. You can see they came very close to shore.
These are mute swans, Cygnus olor, and they are considered an invasive species in the U.S. The birds were introduced into the country as decorative pets in the late 1800s. As is often the case, a few escaped into the wild, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Originally the birds established themselves as ferals in New York and New Jersey. Now the population has spread. According to the Cornell Lab they are "now established in the Northeast, Midatlantic, Great Lakes, and Pacific Northwest of the U.S."
Here is a close-up picture of the swan I found on Wikimedia Commons.
Credit: user, Geni. GFDL CC-BY-SA
The birds are easily identifiable by the black splotch on the face and by the black bulbous protrusion over the beak.
Back in 2014 New York was planning to launch a population control program that included killing or capturing all 2,000 of the swans that were known to exist in the state at that time. The plan was to wipe out the population by 2025. There was public outcry, and since then the more benign program to addle (by oiling them) eggs and sterilize adults was put in place.
California mute swans are not so lucky. There it is literally open season on mute swans and hunters are encouraged to go at it.
Here is a picture my daughter shot of the family drifting in Oyster Bay Harbor, which is a relatively protected body of water.
Apparently the swans are not welcome by the state not only because they eat native vegetation, but also because they physically chase off native bird species. Besides chasing off other species, the swans consume food that otherwise would feed a native species. Most of the plant life the swans consume is under water. This seems to be particularly damaging to the local ecosystem.
You can see there are three babies. Baby swans are called cygnets and are tended by their parents for months, until they are grown. The mother does most of the tending. The father serves as guardian of the family. Male swans can be quite ferocious in their capacity as guardian. This is one of the reasons they are not considered to be good neighbors.
A paternal male swan will attack a human, if the swan feels threatened, and it will kill small pets and birds. Hard to believe when they look so graceful and lovely, isn't it?
Here is a rather blurry video my daughter shot of the swans floating in the bay. You can see the father is keeping his eye on my daughter and her dog.
In this picture you can see the father in his customary vigilant pose, and the mother seems to be diving under water. While swans are essentially herbivores, those who swim in the bay will also eat insects and mollusks. Perhaps the mother was opportunistically diving for one of these creatures that happened to be passing by.
Here we see the parents swimming like bookends, one on each side of their brood. The brood swims safely between them. It's hard to see anything menacing about these beautiful creatures, with their devoted parenting habits. However, apparently looks can be deceiving. Notice you don't see other birds around the swans, and this bay is usually teaming with seagulls and water fowl.
My daughter's dog was fixated on the swans. You can see him in this picture, head down and staring. The birds seem to know he is not a threat to them.
Here he is again, mouth agape, studying the swans. I don't think the dog would bite them if he had a chance. He does like to chase things, though. In this picture you can see one of the young swans reaching its full height, craning its neck to look at something.
Here we can see both swans taking note of the dog and my daughter. She said the swans did tolerate their presence well until a noisy women arrived. The part of the beach where my daughter chose to put her blanket was isolated. All the people were at the other end of the shore.
When the noisy woman arrived she stood right behind my daughter and spoke loudly. She disturbed not only my daughter, but put the swans on high alert. It was only at that point that the father approached and made threatening gestures to my daughter, the dog and the woman.
My daughter got up and walked off to another quiet part of the beach.
Here is the dog intent on his swan observation. The birds seem to be separating. The cygnets are going with the mother and the father is keeping a watchful eye.
New York does have indigenous swan species...two of them: the trumpeter swan and the tundra swan.
Here is a picture of two trumpeter swans (Cygnus buccinator), from Wikimedia Commons:
Credit: Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren CC 2.0
Trumpeter swans were once almost extinct, but through conservation efforts the population has rebounded.
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Here is a picture of a tundra swan (Cygnus columbianus), also from Wikimedia Commons
Credit:Dominic Sherony. CC 2.0
Tundra swans breed in the arctic and may only be seen in New York during winter. This was a swan that was identified by Lewis and Clark on their cross-continent expedition. They called the swan the "whistling swan".
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I'll end this swan excursion with a final picture of my daughter's dog and the swan family floating peacefully in the distance.
Thank you for reading my blog. Peace and health...Hive on!
Oh yes, swans are very territorial, they even hiss at humans if you get too close to them, not just if you harm them... They are a sort of aggressive goose just with less noise
But they are beautiful
According to the experts, mute swans are especially aggressive--especially when they have babies.
I love them :)
I had no idea these swans were considered an invasive species! We have small numbers of them landing in the ponds in the wetlands around us during the spring migration. I think they have their babies elsewhere though because I've never seen little ones around.
Well they sure don't like them in California. I'm proud of my neighbors on Long Island for putting a stop to the killing.
By the way:
Every now and then I Google my name. I want to see if I have become completely invisible :) I received a surprise. One of my books, one that never sold a copy as far as I can tell (except the ones I bought😄) has ended up in the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.
https://www.si.edu/object/four-masters-yuan-and-literati-art-tradition-china-mongol-rule-modern-times-g-moore%3Asiris_sil_1167806
This doesn't mean anything to anyone but me. However, I think as a fellow author you can appreciate that I am tickled. I was always proud of that book and knew it would probably never find an audience (especially since it has color illustrations and is therefore expensive). As an old lady, I get great satisfaction knowing that at least with one person out there (whoever does the curating for the libraries) my book made the cut.
!discovery
Thank you very much, @esther-emmanuel!
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Always stay away from swans :-D Between the dog and the swan, it's maybe 50/50. Swans are incredibly powerful, sharp teeth, strong wings that can break arms. At least that's what I was always told. And they're moody. Not as bad as Canadian Geese, but not far behind.
Incredibly graceful creatures. And fascinating in their behavior. It's a shame for the individual swans that they're invading, but the native swans are definitely worth to preserve, too, so it's bad luck for the mutes.
Great post, thank you for sharing!
My daughter wasn't going to bother those swans. She knows they are dangerous. The dog was on two leashes, attached to her ;)
Only when that noisy woman came did the swans become alarmed. My daughter left.
Invasive, native...everybody who lives in the U.S. is technically invasive:))We all came from somewhere, or at least our ancestors did. I guess the ecologists know what they are doing, but I draw the line at killing the animals. Any other measures are OK with me.
Thanks for the great comment!
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What ever happened to the survival of the fittest? We should leave the bloody swans alone to do their thing. It seems to me that every attempt we make to control nature just makes things worse. I love swans:)
Non-native lionfish in Florida are an absolute menace on the reefs, and have no predators other than humans. It's a real problem with many species around the world. They do real damage to the native ecosystem. They aren't winning because they are the fittest, but because nothing has a chance to adapt to an environmental shock before the damage is too much to recover.
I stand corrected:)
How about those pythons in the Everglades? Humans messed up the environment by introducing these giant, predatory snakes. I guess it's only right that humans interfere to try to reset the balance. Good luck with that!
And then there's the Everglades themselves, where humans decided nature needed to be "fixed," and also purely by coincidence, "reclaim" land for the sugar cane industry in agriculture. Big government spending destroyed the environment.
I thought of Marius the giraffe as I wrote this. Ecologists are not necessarily lovers of nature. They are calculating scientists. They don't see the swan's feathers, they don't see Marius' lovely eyes. They see numbers. Might as well be accountants.
I do understand land management, trying to pull the humane levers that help to restore balance. But murder??? no.
That's humanity for you. When it comes to animals, we're anything but humane.
It's easier to get people to support eradicating an invasive species if it's an ugly bird or nuisance insect, less so when it's an elegant bird.
I think part of the problem is, to the uninitiated, they are all swans. Trumpeter, tundra, mute. Ecologists make distinctions based on small differences between species. That's what it seems like to us, those of us who just love to look at the animals. However, I did find this passage:
Humane population control seems to be reasonable. If we understand that the habits of this bird will truly upset the balance in our environment, we can get behind humane efforts to control the population.
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