The Mute swan fight.

Some years ago on Clumber Park at just after dawn...I heard the thud of a mute swans wings and saw this cob thrashing across his lake to the other side.
A family from the other lake had made the mistake of entering his territory...On seeing the approaching male they turned back.Unfortunately the cygnets had entered the lake and were unable to climb back out.This left the encroaching birds unable to back down..and they re-entered the water to rescue their young...







The two cobs cruised backwards and forwards in an aggressive display...heads tucked in and each trying to look bigger than the other.



The dominant male suddenly attacked the other...and for a time the pen joined in desperately trying to retrieve her cygnets...













At this stage the pen left the males to it and tried to herd her cygnets away from them.











The birds fought for over an hour until completely exhausted when they eventually parted and drifted off into their own territories.
I've seen some fights in my time ,but never one like this...each bird trying to drown the other by pushing them under the water with their wings.
Usually one bird will back down within minutes...but in this case the gygnets being there
made any retreat impossible.

Pictures have been through my scanner...so not as perfect as I would have liked...no digital cameras in those days.

 

What fantastic pics Raebhoop. And the little cygnets are just gorgeous. Thank you so much for sharing them with us.

 

oh my what a battle!! - its quite amazing how they protect their young and their territory - bet the encroachers didnt make that mistake again

I used to go to clumber park with my uncle albert when i was little - he used to fish a bit and we would picnic

happy childhood memories of the place and people


Loopy

 

Blimey,

Made my fight with a swan look like a picnic.

Nice one

 

Excellent shots, and one in the eye for those people that claim that its only us human kind that is unnecessarily violent.

I wonder if the mother goose was the kind of woman that scorns the male afterwards and tells him how disgustingly he behaved, or if she is the type that tells all the other women swans what a hard case her husband is

On the subject of the brutality of nature. I watched an actual battle between a spider and a wasp once. It didn't go on for that long though.

 

Glad to hear you use that method to scare 'em off..I know one or two so called fishermen that aren't averse to using their bait catapults.. I know match fishing is a serious business to these blokes,but some are irresponsible...luckily only a few.
You know the type...leave their line on the banks etc,the angling clubs hate them as much as I do.

I have over a hundred shots of this fight and I'm hoping to scan from the negatives to get clearer pictures...you get the jist of the day from my pictures,but prints through the scanner do lose sharpness.

 

My dad keeps geese on his allotment and has done for many years. When I go up there, sometimes the geese decide to hiss at me (possibly because I'm not that much of a regular visitor to them?). I hiss back as loudly as I can, massively exaggerating the hiss, and leaning forward at the geese and sticking my face right in front of theirs as I do it. It amuses me no end when they kind of skulk off, trying to save face while at the same time getting out of the way of the big featherless goose that is daft enough to stick its face a few inches from their powerful beaks.

 

As I said the Angling clubs don't like this behaviour either,but there are always idiots.At a small lake in Nottingham they have built small jetties for anglers all the way round.Each has it's own litter bin...you can literally reach from your stool and drop stuff into the bin without getting up...and guess what...the water is full of pop bottles and cans all round the jetties...absolutely unbelievable.