Tuesday 1 April 2014

Swans story

Spring is well and truly here and it is time to start the swan's story again.  I love to follow them through the year and hope some of you do too.  Last year the pair had 8 cygnets which caused quite a stir in the area by their travels around town to another lake nearby when they held up the traffic by walking down the middle of the road.  The female was injured at one stage and taken to a swan sanctuary for treatment but later returned.  The cygnets have been moved elsewhere as the adults try to drive them away at the end of the summer.  They are probably with a group of several other juveniles somewhere.

On March 11th I noticed they had started building their nest on the lake in the same place as last year.   The female or pen builds the nest while her partner, the cob supplies the materials.






  Today I stopped by the lake as I noticed the pen was sitting on the nest.  I watched for a while until she stood up and saw that she had 3 or maybe 4 eggs.  This seems rather early in the year as I had read they lay between late April and early May.  I don't know when she laid the eggs so if only recently there may be a chance she will lay more.  The usually lay up to 7 but as they had 8 last year she may do the same again.

The incubation period for the eggs is 35 to 41 days so hopefully we will have cygnets on the lake in early May.















1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have been looking forward to this entry, as you know. Hopefully all will go well for them this year. Thank you!