I'd had a fairly uneventful walk round my local reserve on Monday & was on my way back to the car when I came accross a small group of Mute Swans.
The group comprised of six juvenile/semi-adult birds and they were busy feeding on Canadian pond weed against the shore, I stopped to watch them for a minute or so then for some reason decided to go and sit on a large stone at the waters edge next to where they were feeding.
They were totally unconcerned by my presence and continued to feed and as I sat watching I began to study the interaction between them, listening to the weird selection of nasal sounds that they use to comunicate with each other & how certain patterns and volumes of sound combined with physical movement were used to assert and control the pecking order of the group.
I sat there for nearly an hour and by that time they had become so accustomed to my presence that two of the birds had been giving both my trousers & fleece sleves a tug.
This fantastically rewarding experience really goes to emphasize that we should sometimes take time to just sit and study nature however common it may be, it would have been so easy to just have given the swans a quick glance and walked on, I don't know what made me stop but I'm really glad I did.
