birding-aus

Swans and cygnets

To:
Subject: Swans and cygnets
From: Barry Lingham <>
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:46:20 +1100
Paul; I also noted cygnets at Lake Lorne in the past month, but there was a total of 13 of them in early November. Strangely for very young birds, they were paddling about on their own, with no adult birds in sight. I suspect that there have been several pairs of swans nesting and the cygnets have been forming "creches" from several broods which may be supervised by a pair or just left to their own devices!
Lake Lorne continues to provide surprises - as well as the Freckled Duck, Blue-billed Duck, Black-fronted Doterells, Latham's Snipe, roosting cormorants and spoonbills etc, there was a Glossy Ibis present on 3/11/2008.

Barry Lingham

Swans and cygnets
To: "'Birding-aus'" < >
Subject: Swans and cygnets
From: "Paul Dodd" < >
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:31:32 +1100
Ruth and I visited my parents in Drysdale (Vic) this weekend just gone, and
noticed something a little odd at the local wetland (McLeod's Waterholes).
The last time we were there was about six or seven weeks ago and we saw a
swan family - two adults and five cygnets - all small (two or three weeks
old, according to my mum) and all the same size. This weekend we saw the
swan family again - two adults and four cygnets. Three of the cygnets were
now much larger - hardly surprising since they are now around nine or ten
weeks old. However, and this is the odd part, one of the cygnets was about
half the size of the others. Can anyone shed any light on this? I assume one
explanation is that this chick is simply the "runt of the litter", but I
wouldn't have expected such a marked difference in size. Is it possible that
this cygnet was hatched later? That seems unlikely to me since there was no
evidence of either swan still sitting on a nest the last time we saw them.
Another thought was that this family had somehow "adopted" another chick,
but that also seems unlikely to me.

 

Thanks,

 

Paul Dodd

Docklands, Melbourne

      
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com

To unsubscribe from this mailing list, 
send the message:
unsubscribe 
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to: 
===============================
<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU