Ingham’s W RLD
FEW birds symbolise love quite like swans. With their snow-white plumage and graceful beauty, they seem to embody romance. Better still, they really are icons of fidelity. A study across the decades of 4,000 pairs of Bewick’s swans by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust found that they can teach humans a thing or two about loyalty. Nine in 10 were loyal to their mate throughout their lives.
Only two pairs ever got “divorced”. The rest picked up a new mate only after their soulmate had flown off to the great swan lake in the sky. So the reunification last week of a veteran Bewick’s swan couple, Croupier, 26, and Dealer, 25, was cause for celebration.
They have been wintering at WWT’s Slimbridge HQ in Gloucestershire for 19 years, fattening up for the 2,800-mile return in the spring to their breeding grounds on Russia’s Arctic tundra.
But this year Croupier returned alone. He landed in December and Dealer was nowhere to be seen. As the days turned into weeks, fears grew that the old bird had been lost on migration. All the swans risk starvation, illegal shooting and lead poisoning as they cross the continent, not to mention having to dodge wind turbines and power lines.
But last week Dealer finally touched down for a reunion with her partner, possibly after a winter break on the wetlands of Holland.
As Bewick’s can be identified by the black and yellow patterns on their bills, the WWT knows that Croupier’s grandfather Nijinsky began wintering at Slimbridge in 1969. Croupier’s mum, Casino, lived to be 27, escorting 34 cygnets from Russia to Slimbridge during her lifetime. So far Croupier and Dealer have reared 29 cygnets so they have some catching up to do.
It is important they carry on breeding because Bewick’s numbers are down 39 per cent in just over 20 years.
Swans are not the only birds to show such loyalty. Other birds that pair for life range from bullfinches, which occasionally visit gardens, to albatrosses, which don’t. As the oldest albatross was last year still breeding at 67, that is a long commitment.
The British Trust for Ornithology says house sparrows like domestic bliss as do swifts, which spend most of their lives on the wing, only touching down to nest under our eaves in late spring.
Other happy couples can be found among guillemots and puffins, golden eagles and shelduck, as well as shag, a sleek relative of the cormorant that nests on rocky coasts. So when you buy your Valentine’s card you will be in good company. Romance is only natural. BILLIONS of ants are working by royal appointment to redesign an iconic park. There are three billion yellow meadow ants toiling away in London’s Richmond Park, say the Royal Parks.
They have made 400,000 ant hills and some are at least 150 years old. This ant army weighs 7½ tons – more than an African elephant. But I bet most visitors have never seen one of these tiny workers. POLAR bears are hungrier than was thought possible and climate change is not helping, says a US study. The great white bears have a metabolic rate more than 50 per cent higher than previously believed, says Science, which means they need to eat yet more seals. But retreating sea ice means they have to travel further to find the seals – so many are underfed. GREEN TIP: Leave out old apples for thrushes during the cold spell. FISH could help in the hunt for Russian submarines. The sea is very noisy with dolphins, whales, snapper shrimp and “sawing” carpenter fish behind the cacophony. They are also very nosy so, a submariner tells me, one way to find an enemy sub is to find “bio-noise”. FOUR weeks ago the Environment Agency warned of a summer drought in the South. Since then it has done nothing but chuck it down. There are echoes of Denis Howell who was appointed Minister for Drought in the tinderbox summer of 1976. He was followed everywhere by deluges – the most successful politician ever.