Swans cause road closure in Perth

A family of mute swans caused an emergency road closure in Perth yesterday when they decided to take a long rest in the middle of a street; the police were called in to make sure they they weren’t harmed by traffic. The mum, a female ‘pen’, and dad, a male ‘cob’ had been leading their family of 3 young swans, ‘cygnets’, around the streets near a local pond. Perhaps they’d got lost and walked a long way because the cygnets were sitting down and were refusing to move; they were exhausted! If you look at the middle cygnet you’ll see it has its leg folded up on to its back. Swans do this to control their temperature, using the sun to heat themselves up.

Cygnets normally hatch out from May onwards, so these cygnets will still be quite young and easily tired out, despite looking so big. The adults will look after them until they’re about 6 months old, but then they chase the cygnets away so they can start life on their own with other swans, and the young don’t become fully adult until they’re 3 or 4 years old.

Swans can hatch up to 10 eggs, but the young are often taken by predators like otters, pest foxes and mink, herons, pest birds such as crows and magpies, and fish such as perch and pike. 3 cygnets is quite a respectable number to have in a family, but last year a pair of swans on the Tay in Perth raised a family of 7; perhaps that pair of swans found a safe spot to rear the cygnets or were just very experienced parents. Adult swans are large birds and defend their young aggressively, which didn’t make things any easier for the police that were trying to look after this family stranded in the road.

They’ll have been returned to the pond safely though because not only are they protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 but they’re Royal birds and are protected by the Queen too. And they really are such beautiful birds.