By Bob Zeller

Whilst we were on Phone Duty on Sunday 14^th January this year (2007) a lady from Oxley Island rang to say she had found a young bird of some sort wandering in her yard close to the house. They live on acreage with a large dam quite some distance from the house.

Being concerned for the youngster, because of the number of foxes in the area she wanted to know what to do with it, could she feed it something and how would she go about looking after it. I told her it would be best if she brought it in to me to identify before I would be able to give any instructions on caring for it. Imagine my surprise when I saw it and recognised it as a cygnet about two weeks old, still with the egg tooth attached.

The lady said how surprised she was that one so small could possibly have travelled all the way from the dam and survived. She was quite happy for me to look after it when told how much time and effort, not mentioning equipment, would be needed to get it up to release stage. The humidicrib was once again put to good use for this baby.

Never having raised a swan before I sought help from a member of Native Animal Trust Fund who had raised several in the Newcastle area. Alfalfa sprouts, mung bean sprouts, whole grain bread and several other foods were used by her, so I bought a couple of containers of sprouts and gave some to the little one in water but it had a couple of goes at them and flicked it all over the place. We had some of the fancy green lettuce for salads so we tried that sliced up finely and did that go down a treat. The greens were supplemented with Starter Crumbs with plenty of fresh water because, as with ducklings, it would take some crumbs them some water and a lot of the crumbs would end up in the water, turning it sour.

18^th January in aviary                                                                26^th January 2007

We weighed this baby on Monday 15^th January and it went 160g, then again on the 18^th, 230g, 20^th, 268g, 24^th, 334g. There was always a considerable gain in weight making it clear that the diet seemed to be OK. The baby was growing so fast that I decided to put it out in a small aviary with a bowl of water to swim in during the day and put it back into the humidicrib during the night, this routine lasted until 28^th January when we decided that it could stay out in the aviary day and night, by this time it was 440g.

On 31^st January we took in an Australasian Gannet for care and released it on 3^rd February, which then made the area in the shade house available for the cygnet as it had outgrown the small aviary and needed the children’s wading pool to swim in. On the day we transferred the cygnet to the larger enclosure a Pacific Black duck which we had released a week before arrived back wanting to be let back in for food and water. These two buddied up and even though I open the pen for the duck to be free it would fly off but always returned sometime that day to be let in. (no doubt for the free meal)

4^th February 2007                                                                                     17^th February 2007

The baby was now 772g, (4^th Feb.), growing fast and eating a whole fancy lettuce each day. The last time I weighed it was 17^th February when it tipped the scales at 1.480kg. The duck has now left, I hope for good, as the cygnet is costing a fortune but we love it. I don’t know how I can stop it bonding with me because I need to go in daily to feed it and empty out the wader and fill with fresh water, because the bird will not get out of the water to toilet, however woodducks bond readily and then leave just as readily when they can fly, I think it will be the same with the swan when we finally release it with others of it’s kind down at Harrington.

Some further notes since I wrote these notes on 22^nd February 2007.

Noticed that the dark tail feathers first showed on 18^th February and that the feathers, a mottled grey/brown are appearing on the body and wings. The wings are lengthening now from a tiny, in comparison, 100mm a couple of weeks ago to over 300mm now.

Weighed him on 27^th February and he went 2.185kg, just about at the limit of the scales that we have and a whopping 700g in the last 10 days.

What a gorgeous creature the cygnet is, calls to you when it see you and will happily sit by your feed and talk.

Noticed on 4^th March that the beak is starting to show the red colour coming through and the wing flight feathers are commencing to show in both black and white. The length of the wings have now increased to in excess of 500mm and the weight of the bird has increased to 3.6kg on 20^th March.

20^th March 2007                                                                                 7^th April 2007

The swan was finally released at Harrington on 27^th April 2007 after showing me that it was just about ready to fly by running along the ground and just clearing the ground. This alarmed me a little as all the fences have a strand of barbed wire on top and it would have broken my heart if something happened to it.