Thursday 6 December 2012

Patch gold!

Mute Swan, more here

Well it's taken three years but I've finally added the bird that appears first on the British list when it's in taxonomic order to my patch list. Mute Swan! Today a juvenile appeared from the east and made its way north-west, quite high. There's very few records at CFBW, with the only ones that I know of being two that Dodge had four or five years ago, two that Mark had down the Chipstead Valley in 2010 and a single seen by Larry over Legal & General last year. So it seems it's probably relatively regular but it sure is a tough one and, as I've done, you might be in for a few years' waiting for one. Come to think of it, I don't think that I've seen a Mute Swan flying over any site that lacks water or doesn't have any very nearby waterbodies before. I wonder whether it had been frozen out and forced to move, or, being a juvenile, it had been pushed out the territory by its superiors?