Swan Rescue!

We had a call last night when we were eating our supper, from my step-daughter’s boyfriend Mark, who works at a local cement quarry. He had spotted a Swan that was seemingly stuck in some mud, so I drove over there to meet him, and in the dead of night we drove in his Landrover through a lot of water and mud to where the Swan was that he had seen earlier. Sure enough, the poor creature was still there, with its head tucked in its feathers, with just the black eye giving away the fact that it was a living animal. 

The Swan was stuck fast in thick limestone mud, and had obviously thrashed around to try and free itself, to no avail – the hapless bird’s plumage was completely covered in ochre-coloured mud.
The next thing was to work out a rescue plan, so we got the torch from the vehicle, and while Mark held it, I tried to get hold of the terrified Swan’s neck in order to stop its attempts to peck us. Throwing a towel over its head calmed it down enough to enable me to grab its neck just below the head, whilst Mark managed to scoop up the Swan from his sticky prison. He bundled the bird into the Landrover and I jumped in and drove to where Mark thought there was a reasonably sized pond where we could release it.

After a few minutes, we reached the spot and I climbed out to have a look to see if it was suitable to drop the Swan in, and was thrilled to see another Swan on the water! Could this be its mate, or another male aggressor?
Mark scrambled down as near to the water’s edge as he could and took off the towel and slipped our muddied friend into the murky water. To our relief, he floated and immediately started scooping water into his gullet. We watched to see what the other bird would do – our poor friend was in no fit state to have a fight. The other bird cruised slowly towards our Swan, and made no threatening display of wings spread and neck ramrod straight, and as they came within touching distance, and this is the tear-jerking moment, they touched heads and almost entwined their necks and let out caressing, acceptance noises like I have never heard a Swan give out before. It was obvious that they were mates, Cob and Pen, and by sheer luck, we had chosen the very pool where our boy’s mate was already.

Proud of our rescue, we watched them for about 10 minutes in the blackness, illuminated only by a torch, whilst our Swan did his best to preen himself and after several neck dives, his head was white again, and his orange and black beak were visible, free of the horrible ochred glue. Mark had his phone with him and took these few grainy and unclear photos, but you can see the state of the bird when we found him, and just about make out the moment the two ‘embraced’ each other in a neck-twine. Moments like this make you pumped with pride that we had helped magnificent bird survive, who knew we were trying to help him and surely wouldn’t have survived another day, with Foxes and huge vehicles about. All together…..aaah!

And here are our two birds, swimming off together, and you can clearly see the cloud of mud beneath our rescued bird on the left.