Swans stay put in wild weather!
It will come as no surprise that blustery south-westerly gales and torrential downpours are not conducive to good flying! Migrating with a strong wind against you is hard work and expends far too much energy. Migrating in heavy rain obscures visibility making it hard to recognise landmarks and other features on the landscape useful for navigation. It will therefore also come as no surprise that this wild weather has coincided with very little movement of swans across Europe over the last week. To put it simply, they’ve stayed put.
At a time of year where we would normally see a flurry of new arrivals most days, very few swans are making the trip across the sea at the moment. So far this winter, 168 individual swans have been identified at Slimbridge which falls below the 5-year average of 238 birds usually recorded by Christmas. There are now close to 1,000 Bewick’s swans on the Ouse Washes with several thousand more expected (WWT/RSPB). It’s been unseasonably mild so far this winter which means there has also been less incentive for the swans to press ahead west in escape of the colder east. The swans have also not yet reached the Netherlands in any sizeable numbers – flocks of more than 100 have been hard to come by although there are a couple of notable exceptions. Martin Jansen has reported 2,500 birds on Lake Veluwe and 300 on nearby Drontermeer and hopes that numbers will reach 4,000 there again this winter.
So where are the other swans? Well it seems that most are still in Germany, particularly in Emsland and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the north (W. Tijsen & P. Knolle). And it looks as though things will stay relatively static over the next few days given the forecast!
