I know you will all think I am mad but please read on before you send for the men in white coats!!!
We have lived near a river for almost 6 years now and every year the pair of resident swans build a nest, one sits on it for weeks but nothing has ever happened. Two years ago they built it near the bridge/pavement so you could see into it and one day I was watching one sitting and she got up and I almost cried - she was sitting on a 'clutch' of empty plastic bottles she had collected.
I have asked around and one of the locals told me that they too had been concerned and had brought in someone from the local Wildlife place and they said they were both males. They were not having me on - they were very serious.
I have been tempted to put some of my Aylesbury duck eggs in the nest but common serse has told me that would be wrong so I have resisited. But I feel so sorry for them, trying like they do every year. They act like a couple -totally inseperable.
Anyone got any spare swan eggs they dont want? Ha ha ha
Chez
You have no control over what life & people throw at you - but you have full control over how you deal with it!
I have seen wildlife programmes over the years that indicate that male swans often pair up to raise the young; even to the extent I believe that this is the norm. I am not sure why this should be the case but I do remember hearing about it before.
Keep Norfolk for birds
Hi Chez,
Serious question ... what do the swans do when the time comes for the bottles to hatch?
As long as they are happy with the arrangement, who are we to interfere?
Not quite the same thing, but we have experienced a lot of false pregnancies in our dogs over the years, where they have nested as they would in a litter box, and found suitable babies, varying from a toy to a pair of knickers.
Cheers, Linda.
See my photos on Flickr
They just abandon the nest after a while, I assume they just realise they won’t hatch.
It seems strange that they go through the ritual of building a nest and trying to hatch the eggs every year to no avail. I just wonder if they feel some sort of disappointment every year when nothing happens – or is that just me being daft???
Our chickens will sit on say 6 eggs and when 4 have hatched they just leave the rest and take the chicks out of the hen house. I didn’t understand why at first but the remaining eggs always prove to be unfertilised. On the other hand our ducks will just expel certain eggs from their house, I tried at first to put them back underneath her but 5 minutes later they would be on the lawn again – our dog has a feast!! Again they are always the unfertilised ones. They must have a fantastic instinct.
Hi, if you feel that your area is a safe place for swans, you could approach a wildlife sanctuary or particularly a swan rehab centre to suggest release of a couple of pens onto the pond?
This happens every so often in birds and has been recorded in penguins, flamingos, albatross and others where two of the same sex pairing together. In the case of the albatrosses, two females paired up possibly due to a shortage of males when it came for them to breed and as they can't raise young alone, they paired up. Being female though meant that they were able to raise chicks as one of the females would sneek off to be with a male and return to her ffemale partner! They have done this for years, and it was orginally thought one was male until they were DNA tested which revealed both were female.
I would just let them get on with it, chances are as far as they are concerned they are a couple!
Millie & Fly the Border Collies