A closer inspection of our two Mute Swan broods revealed that one of the seven Aveley Pool cygnets is in fact a Polish youngster. It is strikingly different from its siblings being off white rather than grey and as it grows up it was stay white with the bill acquiring its pink colouration at an early age. I suspect that the legs will also be pinkish. It is not an albino, just a colour morph. I have always wondered whether it was pronounced Polish or polish and some digging on the Swan Santuary website revealed the following:
"The polish mute swan is a ‘pure white’ version of a mute swan. The legs and feet are a pinkish-grey colour instead of the usual black colour. A pigment deficiency of a gene in the sex chromosomes is what causes the whiteness.When a female mute swan inherits only one melanin-deficient chromosome she will be a Polish swan, whereas the male of the same parents will be normal. If the next generation is produced by two of their offspring the brood will contain numbers of both Polish and normal cygnets of either sex.
Polish swans were given their name when they were imported from the Polish coast on the Baltic sea into London around about 1800. Mistakenly thought to be a new species they were given the name ‘Cygnus immutabilis’ (Changeless Swan)"
Ahhh! .... (Julie Dent)
Side by side (David Dent)
A truly non-ugly duckling (Brandon Anderson)
Causing trouble again... they had the whole of Aveley Pool to play with and Dad brought them back to harrass the Coots again!. You can clearly see the Polish youngster with his six grey siblings.