I think we all need to take note of the information contained in the link below after which there are a couple of stories relating to the Bewick's Swan which contain much more joy than the marine article does which is no joy all.
Razorbill thanks to Ian Tallon.
Its always good to see the 'yellowbills' back in this country each winter and more particularly to our area. It took me until 5 February to find sixteen Bewick's Swans on Jeremy Lane though I had seen three earlier on 19 January on Pilling Mash. Whooper Swans were - as always - easier to find and an excellent number of up to 260 were seen on 4 February from Fluke Hall Lane.
Two interesting and intriguing stories have emerged from Slimbridge when last winter a pair of Bewick's Swans - which had been paired for two years - each arrived on the scene separately with new partners, this is only the second ever record as the Bewick's Swans are famously loyal birds which almost invariably mate for life and the 'divorce' issue has only ever happened on one previous occasion in a 40 year study of 4,000 pairs of the species. The truth and the reasons behind this virtually unique event will never be known proving once more that birds are incredibly unpredictable creatures which carry with them their own secrets.
The second amazing tale is about another individual Bewick's Swan which was first seen as a young bird in company with the parent birds at Slimbridge in 1989, the bird returned to Slimbridge each winter for 9 years until 1998. This bird was a male and after 1998 he did a disappearing act and never returned to Slimbridge until this winter 12 years later. As with the last Bewick's Swan tale no one will ever know why this absence came about and the secret will always be with this Bewick's Swan. I personally think it is good that we can never really 'always' know all that there is to be known about birds and nature as a whole and that nature can and always will have secrets we as humans can never unravel.
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