Swanning around
Every year at WWT Martin Mere Wetland Centre, we welcome experts from across the Trust and industry to host a swan catch to continue with our Whooper swan research, allowing us to monitor the health of the species and ring individual birds to develop profiles and family trees.
Reserve Manager, Tom Clare, said: “Catching up the swans is a great opportunity to check the health of these birds. We take measurements of birds that already have a ring and put large rings on one of the legs of the new swans caught (right is male and left is female) so that we can easily identify them and track their whereabouts in Iceland and migration stops along the way. We also weigh them and take measurements of the skull and tarsus. Doing this allows us to pull together the life stories of swans and create family trees – for instance, our 40th anniversary swan XLM (Ruby) was first ringed last year as a juvenile and re-caught at the catch as a yearling – she has grown in weight from 8.6kg to 9.8kg, and her skull length is developing from 172.5mm to 174.4mm – so we know that the whooper swan populations are continuing to be healthy and juveniles are growing well.”
In total 101 Whooper swans were caught up and about 70% of those were new birds that now have rings and their journey can begin back to Iceland for the breeding season, knowing that we can monitor and track the swans on migration.
Tom continues: “Swan catches also bring surprises and all winter we have been searching for a swan ringed as NAZ, who was featured on BBC News North West last year. We had given up on NAZ returning to us and then she just popped up during the swan catch and we were able to get some lovely photos of her.”
The swans will soon start to head back to Iceland and most will have left by mid-March. This is the last couple of weeks to see these birds in large numbers during the swan feeds at 3pm and 3.30pm.
WWT Martin Mere is open every day from 9.30am to 4.30pm and parking is free of charge. Situated off the A59, it is signposted from the M61, M58 and M6. The Centre is also accessible via the Southport to Manchester and the Liverpool to Preston line by train from Burscough Rail Stations. Visit the web site http://www.wwt.org.uk/martinmere/ to find out what’s on all year round at Martin Mere and the other eight centres.
