A swan (a teenager I think) forging through the ice.
@elodieunderglass- is this regular swan behavior or does this swan just enjoy breaking ice?
What an enchanting video! A beautiful slice of winter on the water. Thank you so much for sharing it. It’s made me feel all warm and happy and in love.
In this video, a teenage swan is being mildly menaced by a parent. The parent swan is busking (holding their wings up in an arch) and chasing them, but it’s very very low-key. Presumably the child is not competition, and the parents don’t really mind them being around, but they’re encouraging them to move out. The parent is like “time to go, stop treating this place like a HOTEL”
and the baby is like “ughhh FINE, Ma, I’m GOING but there’s all this ICE, you don’t want me to have an accident do you?”
And the parent’s like, “oh, NOW you’re being responsible? Don’t have an accident. But DO go away.”
There is a thin skin of ice on the canal and the youngster gets through it in the characteristic swan-icebreaking manuever, where they rear up onto their tails a bit and then drop their breast down onto the ice to smash it.
It’s ordinary behavior but they don’t like doing it much. Swans generally don’t like to go on the water when it’s icy, because it’s cold, and they need a long “runway” of clear water to take off into flight. They just go “ugh,” when things freeze over, and act like it’s vulgar But swans and humans are the only things on the water that can Do Something about it. So if they need to, swans break ice.
If they have little babies, and they’re breaking ice to move the babies and find food, then the larger parent breaks it and the family follows in a neat line. And then sometimes all the other waterbirds jump in, because they can finally move around and forage in the opened water. So all these ducks and moorhens will be watching greedily and cramming themselves into the little swan-path. Daddy swan pushing along through the ice, completely exhausted, with six babies, his mate, eight ducks, a moorhen and a confused fish all following in a straight line. The ducks start singing and fighting and Daddy Swan gets pissed off: “keep it down back there! I’ll turn this swan around if I have to!”
If you live on a narrowboat, then you don’t like breaking ice either, because it murders the blacking. But if you do, because you have to get water or something, then suddenly you’ll make lots of friends and all these waterbirds will pile into the water you’ve cleared.
It is a lovely experience of winter on the water and I’m so glad to have shared it with you!
bee-squared-official
