Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT)

As predicted, the north-easterly winds and freezing temperatures have encouraged more swans to make their way to Slimbridge, triggering the reserve's second major swan-fall of the season! Over the past two days, 32 new swans have arrived, twelve of whom have made it back after visiting in previous winters. Although the winter site-fidelity of this species is well documented, it is always a lovely surprise to see the return of a familiar friendly face, particularly when the individual is relatively old. It was therefore very exciting to see Caper again, who first arrived here as a yearling in 1989, making him twenty years old. Over the years, we have tracked Caper through ring re-sightings, on spring and autumn migrations as he has made his way to and from breeding grounds in arctic Russia. Enthusiasts in the field have spotted him in the Netherlands, Germany and Estonia and he has also been known to stop off at WWT Welney on his journey back to Russia from Slimbridge. Staggeringly, Caper has clocked up over 123,000 km of flying! It is also great to see him associating with a new mate called Gambol, after spending his last winter at Slimbridge as a singleton.

With this sudden influx, there are now 146 swans (including ten cygnets) regularly attending the daily feeds on Swan Lake, which is now well and truly living up to its name! Although numbers are rapidly increasing, a total of 193 individuals have now visited us so far this winter which falls below the average number (251 birds) found at this time over the past five years. However, with north-easterly winds and dropping temperatures forecasted for the rest of the week, the flood of swans looks set to continue so we look forward to welcoming yet more new arrivals here at Slimbridge over the next few days.

On such a chilly day, it was very apt to see the arrival of our oldest known swan, Winterling. Winterling first arrived at Slimbridge as a cygnet in 1982 with parents Albert and Rachel, making her a wisely 26 years of age! She was not seen at all last winter which made us wonder whether she had made it another year with mate Wintery, so it was especially exciting to see her feeding happily on Swan Lake this morning. Sadly, Wintery is not with her this season. There is a chance that Winterling lost her mate last winter and went to look for him rather than returning to Slimbridge. Although Winterling has now lost her darvic ring, she has been a regular visitor in the past to WWT Welney and has also been spotted in Texel and Groningen in the Netherlands. We are delighted to see her settle into her eighteenth winter at Slimbridge!

North-easterly winds last night helped bring in five new arrivals pushing the total number of individuals to have visited so far this season to 131 (including ten cygnets). This falls below that of the average number found at this time over the past five years (179 individuals). Tomorrow, there will be a co-ordinated count across the Ouse Washes in Norfolk, a key site for the species which can hold over 70% of the UK population, which should tell us more in the way of numbers currently residing here.

What a lovely surprise to see the return of Crinkly, our much loved Bewick’s swan with the crooked neck, this morning. Although Crinkly arrived on 14 November, she mysteriously left again that afternoon and had not been seen anywhere else until today! We were wondering whether she had become split from a new mate whom she had gone to look for, but there have been no signs of any other associates on her return today. The extremely cold temperatures will have encouraged her to return to Slimbridge, which she would have associated with supplementary food and a safe roost site. Crinkly had a crinkly neck when she first visited the reserve in 2004 as a cygnet and has astounded us by surviving nine long journeys since, during which she has clocked up 27,000km!

The cold weather has also encouraged six more new visitors to arrive over the weekend, and today included old favourite Risa (ringed TPZ) who has been regularly visiting us since 1999. Nearly 90 Bewick’s swans are now regularly attending the 4pm feeds and the flock have also been joined by a lone whooper swan over the past couple of days! Gloucestershire is generally outside of the Icelandic-breeding whooper swan range, although several are often seen at the Coombe Hill and Ashleworth Ham reserves each winter. In fact, ornithologist Mike Smart reported one whooper at Coombe Hill at the weekend which may well be the same bird as the Slimbridge visitor. So, in addition to the resident mute swans, there are now three swan species gracing Swan Lake at the moment!

We expect more Bewick’s to arrive with the continuation of the cold snap and hope that Crinkly is this time here to stay!

On such an icey cold morning, I wondered whether some new faces might greet us as Steve and I did the usual morning round looking for arrivals. Swan Lake was heaving with hundreds of ducks, geese and swans, most of which had roosted and were waiting hungrily for the feed. A total of 80 swans (including four cygnets) were present and accounted for including recent arrivals Gulfoss (ringed TPX) and Grindavik (BCT). Gulfoss is seventeen years old and has visited regularly since his first arrival in the winter of 1991.

Gulfoss has had a remarkable life. Over the years, he has been spotted in the Netherlandson autumn migration and in Germanyon spring migration. In 2002, he brought new mate Anavatn back to the reserve. The following winter, Anavatn was sadly no where to be seen, but Gulfoss did not return alone. Following him from Russia were two young cygnets. Gulfoss did an exceptional job of looking after his cygnets that winter as a single-parent. The whole family were caught and ringed and the youngsters were named Gull and Foss, both of whom have continued to make the reserve an annual feature of their calendar. We look forward to them returning again this winter. Gulfoss is now with mate Grindavik and both make the most of the daily feeds here!  

Although numbers at Slimbridge are now around average for the time of year, a different story from the continent is emerging. Dutch ornithologist Wim Tijsen has reported that an estimated 5,000 Bewick’s swans are now in the Netherlands which is around 3,000 fewer than usual. We are waiting to hear whether there are significant numbers residing in other parts of Europe or indeed, whether there has been a genuine decline as a result of successive years of poor breeding.

The reserve has been absolutely transformed overnight with the arrival of over 34 new swans in what is our first big ‘swanfall’ of the winter! The count has more than doubled since yesterday morning with 60 birds now making themselves at home on the main Swan Lake and in the surrounding fields. As predicted, the cold weather is the likely instigator of this influx as the birds are encouraged further west in search of food.

It has certainly been a busy afternoon. As I arrived back from Welney (where we managed to catch and ring 17 whooper swans), the swans had already started flying onto Swan Lake in preparation for the feed. There was a lot of commotion and bustling as the new arrivals attempted to establish their territories on the lake. The primary feeding areas outside of the observatory are always highly fought over and as a general rule of thumb, the larger the family unit, the more dominant the group and thus the more likely they will take the best feeding spots. This seems to ring true at the moment with our family Connie and Conrad and their two cygnets ably occupying hotly favoured areas of the lake. We try and record the outcomes of most arguments in order to assess the ‘pecking order’ of the flock each winter, so it will be interesting to see how this changes as other families arrive throughout the season.

Not surprisingly, plenty of old friends were patiently waiting for their feed this afternoon! Two special swans adopted by HM the Queen, Dylan and Deena, were among the new arrivals. Dylan (ringed BAT) first came to Slimbridge in 1996 and is regularly spotted in the Netherlands and Germany on migration to and from the reserve. We were fortunate enough to catch Dylan last winter and fit a geolocator to his ring. The geolocators record location information through regular GPS fixes. Six geolocators, kindly provided by the British Antarctic Survey, were deployed in an attempt to shed more light on where the Slimbridge swans spend their summer months and give us a more detailed understanding of their migration routes and staging posts. Although we ring swans here and in the Russian arctic, the breeding distribution of the swans wintering at Slimbridge is still largely unknown. We will need to catch Dylan and the others again this winter to retrieve the geolocator, so fingers crossed! Dylan and Deena have not brought any cygnets back with them this winter, although one of their cygnets from last year (now a yearling, ringed 701) is still associating with them.

Temperatures are dropping again tonight which could help bring a few more favourites our way!