NATURE: Swan lake at Mayo’s Moorehall

I wonder what use they are, really. After all, it wasn’t for nothing that the term ‘swanning around’ became such a widely used idiom.
Yet there they are before me, seven of them, if you please, concentrated in the one small bay that I wish to fish, or that this gusting wind will allow me to. I met another pair earlier in the evening, with four or five tiny, day-old cygnets in tow. I had rowed past them slowly, partly in order not to cause a disturbance, but also because I really wanted a good look at those pretty hatchlings.
The male, the cob, of whom I am rightly a little afraid, positioned himself gallantly between myself and his offspring in an effort to keep them from view. He raised his wings in warning and hissed, suddenly more serpent than bird.
Having once been involved in a very undignified chase with one of his cousins, I knew better than to put him to the test. If you think mute swans are of placid, ambivalent nature, just try getting close when there are babies in the picture. No, don’t do it, not really: There is nothing to be gained in causing any kind of angst, besides which, disturbing them is illegal and in the case of confrontation there will only be one winner.
Yes, they have short legs and cannot run very fast, but they can certainly fly. However, it is the run-fly, using a combination of all four limbs, that propels an angry swan toward his target with something approaching supernatural speed. And as for that great feathered snake of a neck, armed as it is with a snapping trap of razor-toothed mandibles, why, I think it better and far less dangerous to get home late off the lake on a week night than to put oneself in the way of those. Even the colour, orange and black being nature’s own warning, tells us to keep our distance.
There, then, are the babes with their ferocious father. But what is going on further out, where I wish to spend my evening? Seven swans sailing up and down my favourite drift, each of them giving one and all the evil eye. I knew something was afoot.
We know when swans are feeling cross – they raise their wings to make themselves look larger, lower their head on what becomes a loaded spring of a neck, and propel themselves forward with long, powerful strokes of their broad, webbed feet.
One suddenly snapped. Mute swans are not really mute, as this fellow was eager to demonstrate. With a series of angry, whistling exhalations he threw himself at one of his companions. This second bird wisely fled, but in that sudden panic inadvertently charged toward a third bird.
This was the signal for the other four to set about each other, so that in one instant the bay was thrown into turmoil, with half a hundredweight of very angry swans intent on seeing each other off.
Round the bay they went, thrashing the water with wings and feet as if to determine that no fish would be feeding this close to home for the entire night.
Why so many mature male mute swans would converge upon this one corner during the breeding season, I do not know. These are territorial birds, and once they sort themselves out in spring they tend to avoid trespass the consequences thereof.
Perhaps there aren’t enough ladies to go around, or maybe these are young birds not yet of breeding age (mute swans become sexually mature at about four years of age).
All British swans belong to the King of England, which makes me wonder about the name for swan in Irish, eala.
A nobleman is an ‘ealga’ – perhaps there is a connection. Somebody might know the answer. If so, please tell me. A mute swan in Irish is eala bhalbh, with bhalbh means ‘unable to speak’, although as we already said, mute swans are by no means mute, but possess a vocabulary that is richly varied, more so than most water birds.
Incidentally, the mute swan is the largest waterbird in the world. It is vegetarian too, and survives very well on a diet of water weed.
After raising their family to the adolescent stage, swans moult, or change their feathers, at which time they become unable to fly. It was in late summer that our ancestors herded them into captivity and fattened them up for the table.
If these before me knew what was going through my mind and what was good for themselves they’d let me fish in peace.

Michael Kingdon, a naturalist and keen fisherman, lives on the shores of Lough Carra, Co Mayo.