There wasn’t much going on in Stratford this afternoon, other than the fact that the Black Swan, which is usually out on the river, was swimming around the canal basin, flirting with a male Mute Swan. The two species can interbreed, though I don’t think it happens very often, and young swans do tend to pair up over the winter, but I think it’s too early to start contemplating the patter of tiny hybrid feet.
For one thing the flirtation isn’t enough in itself to identify this as a female bird, because Black Swans are said to bond quite frequently with members of their own sex, sometimes stealing eggs from productive nests to raise as their own. And for another, the Mute Swan in question looked to have been attacked, leaving him with significant damage to his left eye and a very swollen knop at the base of his bill, so he might not be an especially good candidate to father and raise a brood of cygnets.
But the Black Swan was letting out its loud bugle call and the Mute Swan was responding with his own unmusical hisses and grunts, and the two of them were engaging in some postural mimicking, and as I said, on a day of not much wildlife activity this was at least… quite interesting.
