Swanning around the Beaches

There’s nothing quite as elegant as a swan is there? And black swans seem to take the word “gracefulness” to a whole new level. Europeans believed that all swans were white, until “gobsmacked” Dutch explorers came across the black variety in Western Australia in 1836 (a “black swan event” has since been used to describe an historical incident that was unprecedented and unexpected).

The black swan is a highly nomadic bird that’s native to Oz and has a spiritual significance to many first nations peoples. It’s also been reintroduced to New Zealand, where a related species was hunted to extinction. As well as being the state insignia of W.A., a black swan is also surprisingly, the emblem of a small English town called Dawlish where they’ve become a tourist attraction. (They were introduced here in the 1940’s). Beer maker, Alan Sherwood, loved black swans so much, that in 1857 he named his Perth brewery after them. Surely no winged creature could ever achieve a better accolade!

Dee Why lagoon was once home to a large colony of swans which fed on the prolific sea grass. The “useless swamps” surrounding the lagoon were systematically drained to enable urban development and the living birds largely disappeared – their image, ironically, being retained, as a symbol, to represent the suburb. One wag, aware of the frenetic construction, believed that the swan logo should have been replaced by a crane! More recently, small numbers of black swans have tentatively returned to the area but dog attacks, foxes, the ingestion of fishing tackle and human interference has led to a perilous existence (in the wild, their lifespan is normally 10-15 years – in safer captivity they will live for around 40 years).

I learned from farcical experience that to remove a fishhook, lodged in a swan’s beak, you need to entice the swan onto the shore with food and then gently overpower it (with the help of others). Not splash clumsily after it, into deep water. You have to be careful approaching them though as they can defend themselves by beating their strong wings, which contain a very hard “carpal” bone at the joint.

Black swans build a large mounded “nest” out of grasses and reeds prior to breeding. They mate for life and share incubation and rearing duties between the sexes. DNA tests show that 15% of young swans (cygnets) are actually fathered by different males…so although they are seemingly “monogamous” they are not always “monotonous”. A bit of hanky panky is definitely going on! After breeding, the birds moult their flight feathers and are unable to fly for a month. Consequently, they settle on lakes and lagoons, for relative safety. They are almost exclusively herbivorous, feeding on aquatic plants and algae and they swim with just one leg – the other being tucked above their tail.

You’d think everyone would treasure these “visions of beauty”, but it was revealed, recently, that the Tasmanian government has licensed the killing of many thousands of black swans. Their crime? They’re blamed for “fouling” waters, stocked by introduced (and environmentally harmful) trout. A new threat has now emerged that could endanger the entire black swan species. It appears that they lack some of the immune genes which could provide resistance to rampant bird flu strains, which are decimating avian populations around the globe.

The name “swan” has its roots in the older word “swen”, which means to sing. Let’s hope they can keep on doing just that.