This is actually gonna turn into a swan story in a minute but I don’t have a pic of those so here are the teenage ducklings that were gathered outside Cubelandia yesterday afternoon. I suspect that Dreadlock Guy is feeding them occasionally. I’m not sure that feeding ducks is a good idea but he’s such a sweet person that I’m not going to say anything to him. Anyway whaddo I know?

I’m not sure if I wrote about Swan Corners here or not. I *think* I did write about it back in the spring. At that time Daddy Swan had succumbed to death by some kind of natural cause. He and Mooma Swan had seven eggs. Four of them hatched. Two of the cygnets eventually went missing. There was some speculation that they had been run over by an automotive vee-hickle but it turns out that the fuzzy little remains on the road were goslings. So snapping turtle was the next guess. This is Mother Nature at work, maybe sadder to humans than to wildlife mooms.

Last weekend, someone caught a glimpse of one of Mooma Swan’s wings and it looked broken. Many feathers were missing and it looked like she was bloody, etc. A minor panic ensued and someone called the humane society. The result of that is the live-trapping of the two remaining cygnets and transportation to a rehab facility. They had a bit more trouble snagging Mooma.

And this is where it got a bit ugly, given that there is a Swanfriends facebook group, which is on the Internet… People started to weigh in saying that the ugly looking wing was a normal part of molting (which we know Mooma is doing) and that when new feathers come in, blood is visible in that it is an important part of growing new feathers. It isn’t like her wing is dripping blood on the ground.

I don’t know anything about swan physiology (except that they are BIG and do not get in Daddy Swan’s way) or wing structure or molting processes. All I can say is that I am happy to report that Mooma Swan was eventually captured and reunited with her cygnets. They are in a safer area now. At Swan Corners, all of the ponds are directly adjacent a couple feet from the roads and the swans hang out near or *on* the road because it is warm there (I think).

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