Swans

These days swans have an urban reputation for thuggishness. There are a pair of them living on the creek, who have elsewhere been described as resembling “lemon-faced geezers outside a dodgy pub”. C is rather frightened of them, and so perhaps am I, a little bit, so we don’t usually feed them or encourage them. They will still make a b-line for you if they see you when you are standing outside on the boat for any length of time, especially when the tide is in and they can swim up. This avails them little, especially if you are standing at the front of the boat, where their hungry heads disappear under the gunnels when they get right up to the side.

Two Saturday mornings ago I spent an idle half-hour watching one these neighbourhood mute swans making life difficult for a couple of canada geese. There had been some swan/goose-like honking in the night, C tells me, so perhaps this waterfowl face-off had been going for some time.

I've noticed the swans have been getting up to a fair bit of other-bird-bullying in the last month. When they arch their necks back and heads forward in an exaggerated S-shape, bristling and fanning out their wings at other waterfowl in attempts to see them off, they quickly forfeit their graceful air and start to look rather daft. As for the impression this makes on the geese, I’d say the geese don't look terribly worried. They take it in turns to be chased and hassled, and do just sufficient to keep their distance from the arsy swan, seemingly in their own good time, with what looks to me like a fairly "not bothered" demeanour.

But the swan is as persistent as the geese seem to be heedless. When the swan waddles too close behind a goose on the shore, the goose takes to the water. When in the water, the pursued will take to brief flight whenever the swan launches itself in its direction, but will come back down in the water and attempt to continue its “minding me own business” business. Each swan attack is a "shot across the bows"; no earnest attempt seems to be made to make any direct strike, with aerial attacks alongside rather than directly at the geese.

At one point, the bothersome swan follows a long suffering goose out of the water and onto the muddy bank near the front of our boat, while I sit watching close by. These swans are never more awkward looking than when making the transition from water to land, as their flappy web footed undercarriage appears from beneath them and engages mechanically with the not so dry land, tails swishing from side to side. Now the swan squares up to the goose and flaps its wings menacingly, with the goose backed up in the corner of the creek wall. But despite the swan's aggressive showboating, it makes no move to stop the goose when it steps quickly past it and heads back into the water and upstream, off and out of sight, swan following.

Of course I have wondered a bit about all this recent swan aggro. Does it serve a useful purpose? Are they so half-starved at the meanness of the scavangeable food around here (and the meanness of us, not feeding them) that they must try to scare off the competition? I am not sure what state of health the two birds are in. The yellow discolouration and muddiness of the feathers on their breasts, necks and the tops of their heads had suggested to me that they were in poor nick. But perhaps a bit of grunge is inevitable on a white bird in so muddy a habitat; they appear robust in health in all other respects.

More likely their aggressiveness is down to nesting behaviour. I read swans lay their eggs around this time of year, with the male sharing nesting and incubating duties with the female until the eggs hatch around May. So it’s understandable that they may be trying to see off other large birds who might pose a threat to their nest. But here’s the thing: where do these swans nest? I can’t see how it can be on the creek, because the tide rises each day high up the sides of the walls that completely enclose the creek, leaving no plausible nesting place for them. Although not the case today, with only one swan around, the swans appear constantly to be “on the road” together, sleeping where and whenever they find an opportunity, as the mood takes them, heads tucked into their wings, usually standing somewhere along the shore. Seeing one swan without the other nearby is unusual. Perhaps their nest is further upstream on the Ravensbourne, past Deptford Bridge? But that seems too far from here, where they spend so much of their time. Perhaps they have yet to build a nest. Or perhaps nesting and parenthood simply isn’t a viable option for this grubby vagabond pair, and their bullying and shoo-ing of other birds is an instinctive but, sadly, neurotic and redundant pattern.

Back comes one of the geese, swimming downstream, just near the boat. A few metres behind it, yet again, comes the swan, arching and bristling – closing in. Then, simultaneously, they both take to flight, and this time, with the swan pursuing more closely and directly, the goose continues through the air in a low, accellerating arch until it disappears around the creek bend and out of sight. A moment later, the goose’s companion gives chase, with clamourous honks, flying straight up and over the distant railway line towards the Thames to find its mate in the wider creek beyond.

The swan has won. Boo! Hurrah!

A couple of days later, looking down on the creek from my DLR train carriage travelling between Greenwich and Deptford Bridge, I discover the answer to my speculations about a swan nesting place. Next to the cluster of boats, the General being the largest, moored downstream from us is a floating wooden platform; an anchored raft a couple of metres square, with a stepped ramp along the side, covered in straw. There was a swan sleeping in the middle of it. The swans have a home after all.