Winter brings swans back!
Well winter has really arrived this week! Those cold, crisp days with biting northerly winds are back with a vengeance, and accompanying them are more arctic visitors escaping even cooler conditions further east. I had a hunch that yesterday would be busy when I heard the clamour of new arrivals on the lake as I scooted to the hide for my morning observations. A total of 17 Bewick’s had arrived overnight pushing the reserve count up to 40. And all of them have visited Slimbridge in previous winters! Groups of this size are usually made up of a mix of returning visitors and swans new to the reserve but it looks as though that this group have stuck together. We welcomed back two new families, Tool and Times with their two cygnets and Phoenix and Phoenican with their first known brood of four cygnets.
Bianco and Rosso flew in for their 13th winter as did Lucius who is the father of Crinkly, a swan with a deformed neck that visited Slimbridge between 2004 and 2008.
Many will be pleased to hear that Latchet, one of our newest swans that you can adopt, arrived back with her mate Latchling. Latchet is the offspring of Wooton who flew in with her partner Stinchcombe and their four cygnets on Tuesday. Although Bewick’s swans usually gain complete independence from their parents after a couple of years, parents and offspring may continue to loosely associate and provide support in territorial fights thereafter.
We will be watching to see how this mother-daughter relationship unfolds during the course of the winter...
