This is the pair of Mute Swans that spend most of their time on the canal basin by the Bancroft Gardens in Stratford. I think they’re probably the same pair who nest higher up the canal in the spring, but I mostly see them down here, where they make a pretty good living persuading tourists that they want to get out onto the river, but can’t: “Oh look! The poor things! They’re trapped! Quick – give them some of that bread – they must be hungry!” When they do actually want to get out onto the river, they can simply jump up onto the wharf here, and walk fifty metres across the park, but they do a good line in apparent desperation, swimming frantically to and fro next to the closed lock gates, and the first time you see it, it’s easy to be taken in. I’m sure the swan warden gets to hear about the trapped swans on a regular basis.
Anyway, today they were doing their to-and-fro patrol in a different spot, well away from the lock, and it didn’t take me long to spot the cause: another fully-grown female wanted to get in the Basin with them, and they were determinedly repelling the attempted incursion. Unfortunately for the new arrival they were faster in the water then she was on land – plus, they had a two-to-one advantage – so however hard she tried to find a space on the wall that would allow her to hop down into the canal, one or both of them always made it there before her.
It must have been at least an hour later when I came back through the Bancroft Gardens, but the young pen was still trying to get into the Basin, and still being repelled. I felt a little sorry for her until she waddled over and tried to search the cross-body bag at my waist for food – but at that instant my anthropomorphic sympathy switched: she was a mugger and a thief, and the old couple were clearly justified in defending their home. My second photo shows the resident cob busking rapidly back from seeing her off further along the wharf, and looking rather splendid, I thought, in what was the first and last good light of the day.
R: L2, C1, D6.
