Lost And Found!

The Mute Swans are always to be found on the River Lune at Glasson, they are particularly attracted to and take advantage of the grain swept off the quayside as spillage from the unloading of ships, peak counts of these birds can be towards 200 on occasions. 

Mute Swan. Gary Jones @ Portraits Of Nature

In my last post I made a note that the Lune Estuary Mute Swans had disappeared en mass, with not a single bird seen on the River Lune at Glasson Dock on my last visit there Thursday last week, nor on Jeremy Lane and Moss Lane to Cockersands where they can usually be found when some of them leave others behind on the estuary, though in the case of Jeremy Lane, I'm aware of someone on a quad bike intentionally driving the swans off the fields, it's beyond me why anyone would find it necessary to do this. 

I was grateful to Jean Roberts and Andrew Cornall who got in touch to tell me they had both independently seen a large number of Mute Swans in fields off Hillam Lane at Cockerham, it's reasonable to assume these are the Glasson birds. Andrew had counted 78 Mute Swans on Hillam Lane on Thursday, he had also noted two dead Mute Swans here which brought back memories for me of the twelve found in close proximity and all about the same time around the Glasson/Cockersands area early in the year in February. This was a puzzling and worrying affair which I reported to DEFRA, I was involved in collecting the dead birds, and followed up the autopsy results, all of which concluded with my not being convinced - for one reason or other - that I'd been told the whole story about why twelve Mute Swans had been found dead, all in a small area, and all in a short period of time.

At the time these dead birds were being found, I was made aware of a message sent out by the police on 18 February which read....'Observations are requested for a silver Subaru car possibly linked to wildlife crime'.

Thanks to Gary for the Mute Swan, and to Marc for the Great Skua header....Brilliant photographs of brilliant birds.