As many of our regular visitors will have observed, the resident male swan on Forge Mill Lake is a bit of a brute. Some volunteers have even christened him 'Attila the Swan' because of his aggressive behaviour.
A few weeks ago during a quiet Saturday afternoon in the hide it was observed that 'Attila' was in fact wearing a ring on his leg. It is one of those things that I had assumed someone else had reported but nobody had so after a slightly farcical 30 minutes trying to read the leg ring, I went home and submitted it via www.euring.org.
Today I received a lovely card through the post from the man who ringed the bird. It reads:
"Dear Mike,
Thank you for your record of orange ringed mute swan R00, which arrived via WWT Slimbridge today. You will see from the details below it is a while since I have had any sightings of this one, so to know it is paired and successfully breeding is great. Details are as follows:
R00: Metal Ring W16800 CYGNET RINGED 11-10-05 R[IVER] SEVERN, WORCESTER - ARRIVED WITH BROODMATE (R99-W16799) + PARENTS [...] IN FLOCK OF 130 APPROX.
Sighted
19-02-06, 28-03-07, 16-05-07, 31-10-07 and 08-12-07 all R. Severn.
It is interesting to note the gaps between sightings, I try and check the flock weekly at least, so it suggests R00 wasn't spending much time there and may have been visiting your area before settling to breed.
Yours Sincerely, Edward"
A massive thanks to Edward for this detailed information. It is interesting to know that our (now huge) male swan was a cygnet, and therefore hatched, in 2005 so he is now 7 years old. After asking around we cannot remember how many years this male has been breeding on Forge Mill Lake but it is possible that after the last sighting on the River Severn he took up residence here.
Let's see how much longer his reign of dominance over our lake continues - there are certainly no signs of him being overturned any time soon.
Mike
Mike Ixer