The Ugly Swan
Mute swans aren’t mute. They vocalize like feral hogs; and in places they don’t belong (North America, for example) they’re no less destructive of native ecosystems.
Photo courtesy of Maryland State Parks
by Ted Williams
The 79 mute swans that paddled ahead of our pram on a bright August morning swam with their necks curved in a graceful "S" and their wings arched above their backs -- birds perceived by the general public as “regal” and “beautiful.”
They were pure white with black, fleshy knobs over orange bills -- the biggest (or, according to some sources, second biggest) flying beasts on earth. Males of our native trumpeter swan tend to be slightly larger than female mutes. But male trumpeters tend to be slightly smaller than male mutes.
The breeze off Massachusetts’ South Cape Beach bore the fragrance of seaweed and tidal flats. Two ospreys hovered; mallards erupted; monarch butterflies danced through purple loosestrife; killifish rippled the shallows.
As we approached, most of the swans faded into cattails at the north end of the 30-acre salt pond. The 20 or so that retained sufficient feathering lumbered aloft, first running along the surface, slapping the wavelets with huge black feet, enormous wings pounding, wind blasting through ragged primary feathers with a sound audible for a mile and reminiscent of French police sirens.
Operating the pram's electric outboard was Michael Ciaranca, one of the continent’s leading mute-swan authorities (now Dr. Michael Ciaranca, Deputy Director at Environmental and Readiness Center, Massachusetts Army National Guard, Camp Edwards).
This pond, he told me, is one of five water bodies in Massachusetts where mute swans congregate during the vulnerable time of molt. In the fall, when new feathers have grown in, they scatter, fetching up on Massachusetts' outer islands, inland Cape Cod, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Not everyone is happy about it.
Least happy are people who value native wildlife. Mutes, which evolved in Europe and Asia, made their North American debut in the wild when a breeding pair -- apparently escapees -- showed up in New York State in 1919. Today they’ve proliferated, each male defending territories of up to 25 acres and frequently evicting or killing native water birds.
In the Midwest, mutes are displacing nesting loons. Along the Atlantic they’re displacing shorebirds and waterfowl. In Chesapeake Bay, they’re trampling and crushing eggs and young of black skimmers and four species of terns. Throughout their New-World range they’re the avian equivalent of kudzu.
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Each male mute swan defends a territory of about 25 acres, frequently evicting or killing native water birds.
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To get at shellfish and the roots of aquatic vegetation, mute swans use their feet like toilet plungers, swirling out substrate and degrading water clarity. They consume 8 to 10 pounds of vegetation per day, ripping up plants by the roots. And they pollute ponds and foul beaches and shorelines with their prolific feces.
Yet despite all the ecological damage done by mute swans, their appearance renders them largely exempt from major population reduction by professional wildlife managers who get cursed every time they propose control. Carefully regulated public hunting seasons of the sort traditionally set for our native waterfowl are politically out of the question.
And that's a pity, according to my friend Boon who shoots mutes illegally and tells me that no more succulent wildfowl ever set wing over a December goose blind. History bears him out. So relished were mute swans in ancient England that they could be owned only with approval of the crown. In 1466 George Neville, Archbishop of York, served 400 at his Installation Feast.
Traditionally, most English swans were semi-domestic; each bore the mark of its owner on its bill, and all were tended by the "Royal Swanherd." Today in England, mute swans are protected as a "royal bird." But there, at least, they are part of the native fauna. Americans don't have that excuse.
Some of the swans Ciaranca and I were watching wore flexible plastic neck bands, the numbers of which he read with a spotting scope. Their normal vocalization -- gasps, grunts, growls and gurgles -- make the public worry that the bands are too tight. Once Ciaranca had to make a three-hour drive from Boston to Hyannis after a frantic mute swan advocate phoned to report that a banded (and perfectly content) bird was "choking."
When Ciaranca had finished recording band numbers, we loaded the pram back onto his truck and drove through a Cape Cod scrub forest of black gum, red oak, pitch pine and sassafras to Red Brook Pond, where water lilies bloomed white as swan feathers and young largemouth bass shot into the air for dragonflies.
We were checking on "Jimmy Durante" -- a monster mute, so-named for the prominence of his black knob. At an estimated 45 pounds, Jimmy was not much smaller than the biggest mute on record -- 49 pounds.
Once, when Ciaranca threw a net over his head, Jimmy responded by giving him a severe bruising with the heavy manus joints of his wing bones and, with his sharp claws, tearing off the biologist's shirt and a good deal of skin from his back and arms. He showed me the scars. On another occasion, after Ciaranca had invaded his territory, the outraged Jimmy performed an ecological service by pummeling a stand of 7-foot-high invasive phragmites until it was level with the mud.
Presently, Jimmy, his nameless mate and their three surviving cygnets appeared at the far end of the pond. Six cygnets had hatched, but snapping turtles -- among the mute's few predators on this continent -- had consumed three. A large element of the public is horrified at the sight of a young mute swan struggling as it spirals downward into tea-colored marsh water, victimized by an ugly, smelly, Triassic relic. A Maryland woman hired a Chesapeake Bay waterman to trap and kill native snapping turtles so a pair of alien mute swans could raise all their fuzzy cygnets in a nearby inlet.
Mute swans are one of the few species that commonly fight each other to the death. One biologist described the process as follows: "The unfortunate swan is usually pursued and 'ridden' by the aggressor, his head being forced beneath the water until he either drowns or succumbs from exhaustion."
Mute swans kill dogs in the same fashion. They’ve even been known to kill humans. For example, in 1982 an Indiana fisherman drowned when a mute swan capsized his boat and beat him on the head and shoulders until he went under. In case anyone was plotting a reprisal, the local deputy sheriff caught the bird and placed it under protective custody.
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A Maryland woman hired a Chesapeake Bay waterman to trap and kill native snapping turtles so a pair of alien mute swans could raise all their fuzzy cygnets in the nearby inlet.
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In Michigan mutes regularly attack jetskis, launching as soon as the engine fires up, flying across the lake at speeds approaching 50 miles per hour and knocking the rider off the saddle.
Because Michigan's mutes have become a danger to humans -- sometimes striking them hard enough to cause lacerations that require stitches -- the state has a program to remove "rogue swans.” Even live capture and rehoming of mute swans is opposed by an outfit called Save Our Swans.
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Because Michigan's mutes have become a real danger to humans -- sometimes striking them hard enough to cause lacerations that require stitches -- the state has a program to remove "rogue swans.”
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Mute swan birth control by egg addling (shaking) is hazardous duty for biologists who occasionally get beaten up by angry males. "Fielding a line drive without a glove" is how one egg addler described the sensation of a manus joint hitting his outstretched hand.
But some animal-rights activists can’t even tolerate egg addling. With swan egg in hand and very pregnant, Rhode Island Division of Fish and Wildlife biologist Lori Suprock was confronted by a man who made threatening gestures and asked her how she'd like to have her eggs shaken.
On another occasion, a woman phoned her to request "proper burial" for a swan that had expired in a marsh. Suprock explained that death comes inevitably to all wild, feral and domestic animals, that burial of wildlife is not a service her agency provides, and that carrion is part of the web of life. The woman was apoplectic. "When a kid gets run over on the highway," she demanded, "is that part of the web of life?"
Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection suffers condemnation for trying to keep its 1,400 mute swans somewhat in check. "The department is wedded to hunters," Friends of Animals told The New York Times, "and they're trying to appease the few who get angry when they see a swan floating in a square foot of space that a shootable duck or goose could be floating in." In a press release, Friends of Animals explained that its “researchers” had learned that all other mute swan researchers had gotten everything wrong and that its own researchers had determined the truth -- that "mute swans' feeding habits are useful for saving rivers from an overabundance of water weeds and their droppings enrich plant life."
The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department decided that just for a year it would live-capture as many mute swans as possible. In its search for happy homes for the swans the department contacted resource agencies in Quebec, New Hampshire, New York, Maine, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maryland. In all cases, it was forbidden to bring the birds across the borders. At last, it palmed off the birds on a "private conservation facility" in Texas, a cesspool for alien species.
That was back when Ron Regan was Commissioner of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. He told me this at the time: "The public has lost sight of the fact that animals die. Time and time again, people said to me, 'Well, we're not native either.' We actually had a native American come to a hearing. She was the first speaker; and she said, 'None of you would be here if my people hadn't let you come. So why can't we let the swans stay?' I tried to assert that man has management prerogatives and responsibilities. I really thought there would be more sympathy for the idea of conserving native species and natural systems. I had people say to me, 'Big deal. Who says a mute swan is worse than a gadwall or a heron?' I'd ask them what they thought we should do with zebra mussels. They'd say, 'That's different.' Or: 'So what if we lose all the native mussels? We shouldn't kill anything at all. And if the zebra mussels are here, that's just the way of the world, and let them stay.'"
All mute-swan damage pales in comparison with that suffered by Maryland. Mute swans destroy native vegetation in Chesapeake Bay.
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“The public has lost sight of the fact that animals die. Time and time again, people said to me, 'Well, we're not native either.'”
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On Maryland’s eastern shore, mutes have eliminated colonies of least terns and black skimmers. And they are displacing common, Forster's and royal terns.
The native tundra swan persists in Maryland but is losing ground to the non-migratory and much larger mute swan, which spends the entire year glutting itself on the plants tundra swans need in autumn after their grueling 4,000-mile flight from the arctic. So spectacular had been the recovery of bay grass around Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge's Barren Island that the National Geographic Society saw fit to include it as part of its Chesapeake Bay exhibit in Washington. But mute swans reversed that recovery.
When the Maryland Department of Natural Resources started a mute-swan control program, billboards blossomed, demanding that the state cease and desist. The DNR can't seem to win. After the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service herbicided an invasion of phragmites on a swanless island and burned the dead stalks, neighbors claimed that the state had escalated its war on swans by resorting to “flamethrowers.”
The last flock of mute swans Ciaranca and I inspected were foraging in Salt Pond in Falmouth, Massachusetts. It’s a preserve for native species like oysters -- a delicacy that never will be the same for me, especially on the half shell. Swan feces, which Ciaranca harvested with plastic spoons for a Giardia and Cryptosporidium study, littered the bare, muddy shore. The acidity had killed the marsh grass, and the ammonia-like stench caused my eyes to water. The scats were about the shape and size of those produced by dogs, and the color range varied between browns, grays, blacks and greens. Half a dozen of the 36 swans on the pond paddled over to us in the hope of getting fed.
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After the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service herbicided an invasion of phragmites on a swanless island and burned the dead stalks, neighbors claimed that the state had escalated its war on swans by resorting to “flamethrowers.”
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Presently, we moved to another part of the swan-blighted shore, beside a paved bicycle path. Ciaranca collected more feces. A lonely oyster, surrounded by large divots where swans had been puddling, clung to a rock.
Behind us, two young women appeared on the bike path, one pushing a double stroller containing blond twins. They had come here to watch the swans. They stood in the sun, smiling, talking, cooing, pointing out the beautiful white birds to the babies.
No manager wants to eliminate mute swans; it's impossible anyway. "All we want to do,” said Ciaranca, “is get them down to a reasonable number and keep them there.”
I wondered if the women would be content with six swans instead of 36. I thought about asking them, but Ciaranca’s research depended on the good graces of the public.
Ahead of us -- in a picture that has inspired humans through the ages -- the mute swans cleaved the sparkling surface, their necks curved in the shape of an "S," their wings arched above their backs.
Ted Williams writes rare books as well as articles for low-paying publications.