Category: Swans of Pond Cottage
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Living and learning with swans
We are co-dependents, if you like. We don’t just want these beautiful birds to survive, we need them to. Symbols of nature’s resilience. Besides, the parents have shown imaginative skills of their own.
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The Resilience of Swans: Parenting Lessons from Pond Cottage
On another wet and windy day we return to Pond Cottage after a night away, pausing by the gate to check the postbox. And there’s a surprise package, a gift that brightens the gloom: a delightful sketch of our Mother Swan by the talented artist Rowena Millard.
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One snort for hello?
At no risk to ourselves we can make our own surrounds much greener, safer – and a lot more pleasant.
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Swan watch: a parents’ guide to survival
After almost 20 years of sharing the pond with generations of swans we are gradually learning to expect the unexpected. But this year brought a humbling discovery for human parents.
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Reds (almost) under the bed
A flurry of white feathers on the pond, a pile of guano on the front doorstep and two peanuts in a corner of the hall. Welcome signs of wildlife at Pond Cottage and, note, they are not all outside the cottage. While swans (mostly) keep to the pond, our doorstep guano is deposited by bats roosting…
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Swanwatching at Pond Cottage
Phew! Great relief as mother swan appears round a bend in the stream with four cygnets in tow. We had an anxious half hour after arriving at Pond Cottage when only the dad and two young ones appeared at the bank to be fed. It’s not easy being surrogate swan parents!
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Troubled waters
Agitation on the pond. Fear and fury rippling across the water. Ducklings darting in and out of reeds, their mother circling and crying overhead. The swan family on guard, cygnets packed tight between parents, mother hissing, father lunging at the bank, hitting out hard with his beak. Two helpless humans standing by wondering what on…
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First catch your swan
‘You know those ducks in that lagoon by Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over?’ I blew the dust off my old copy of The Catcher in the Rye to find that quote. Rather eerily it fell…
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Swans rule at Pond Cottage
They shall not pass… The picture is not very clear but you get the idea. These swans have no intention of letting anyone get past. When I stand up the adults stand up, when I move forward so do they, hissing and opening their wings to make sure I get the message. It takes a…
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Empty pond syndrome
The birds have flown. Or rather, since this is the moulting season, perhaps they have just shuffled off somewhere downstream. Wherever they have gone and however they got there, the pond seems much too quiet and I am wandering around gloomily counting ducklings and cygnets that are nowhere to be seen. I don’t think it…