Psilos Bird Photography

The Mute Swan

A Portrait of a young family
Nearby to where I live there is a lodge. I guess for many the word lodge would conjure up the image of a hotel or of beavers and the huge dam like structures that they build to live in, but this is not the case here. Here a lodge is a local term for a lake and upon this lake there is a wealth of wildlife, including Common Terns, Grey Herons, Great crested Grebes, Common sandpiper, Geese (Canada and Greylag and a few hybrids inbetween) coot, Moorhen, Mallard, Tufted Duck, Ruddy ducks and in the winter Goldeneye. Around the lodge you can find sedge and willow warber, Blackcap, Reed buntings and all the common garden birds that most people are familiar with. There is also a range of habitats around the lake, including small coppices, rough grassland and reed beds. It is in these reed beds that this story begins. There is nothing special about this particular reedbed. Indeed it could be anywhere in the UK but in the reedbed can be found a very special bird. This is the Mute Swan, the largest and most elegant of our waterbirds and she is sitting on her nest brooding six eggs......
 
 

Whilst building the nest the male has ripped down alot of the reeds in front of the nest giving everyone a clear view across the lodge to where the female sits patiently. The incubation period is around 35 days and around the last week in May we all waited expectantly. Towards the end of the incubation period the female became much more restless. Previoulsy she had sat for hours with barely a twitch but now her behaviour was different. She was constantly changing position, looking beneath her and fluffing up her feathers. The nest is quite deep so we couldnt see if any cygnets had hatched but we were quietly confident.

Sure enough two days later we got our first glimpse of her cygnets.....For several hours the proud parents kept close to the nest area but after a while they couldnt resist, like all new parents showing off their babies. Just as we hoped, there were six fluffy, grey cygnets and they were all perfect.
 
 
 
 

These little birds can swim almost as soon as they are dry and are full of curiosity. At the beginning they stay very close to mum but already you can see which are the bravest and shyest of the group. They are totally dependant upon their parents for food but they are very quick learners and will soon learn to forage for themselves.

Whilst they are still very young the parents keep the cygnets out on the open water where they will keep a close eye on them. However, six mouths need alot of feeding so they head for the nearest, lushest vegetation near the waters edge.
 
 
 
Here mum gets busy pulling out the vegetation looking for fresh young roots and shoots and stirring up the water so the cygnets can start to learn to feed themselves. Some of the cygnets dont really know what to make of it but others are watching much more closely.