Feed the birds, tuppence a bag

21 January 2016

With our little bag of granary loaf crusts we walked towards the jetty. The black swans and their five little cygnets were nowhere in sight but we thought we might tempt them out if we were lucky. A handful of gulls floated on the river and a few more were in the air but it was quiet in the cold sun. We were both full of cold and feeling less than our best and when we came to the bench just before the jetty CJ said he wanted to sit down. At first I thought he was feeling tired from the short walk but it turned out he had a plan.

Once we were seated he fished the bread bag from his pocket.
“Don’t waste it on the gulls,” I said, “they’ll grab more than their share when you throw it to the swans.”
“Just a little bit,” he said, breaking off a morsel of crust, “maybe the black swans will see the commotion. It’ll give them time to come across before we get to the jetty.”
Before the first crumb landed we were surrounded by swooping gulls. They must have some kind of bread radar.

The gulls squabbled and bickered over the small crumb of bread and, once the battle was won, stood around on the path waiting for more. Each tossed crumb brought a renewal of activity. Then I noticed one gull had only one leg. He seemed to be grabbing his share of crumbs despite this and, when he landed, was as steady on his single leg as all the two legged gulls. CJ and I wondered whether he’d been hatched this way or if he’d lost his leg in an accident of some kind. In the wild, with such fierce competition for every scrap and no compassion from his kind, it’s a marvel he’s survived so well.

When the scrap of bread was gone, with no sign of movement from the place the black swans hide out, we made our way down onto the jetty. A lot of snowy white heads popped up as soon as they heard us clumping down the metal slope and a few bodies slid silently beneath us. Before CJ had even got the bread bag back out of his pocket they were jostling for position.

CJ was far braver than I in his approach to swan feeding. Instead of throwing the bread into the water he held pieces out over the bars and let the huge birds take it from his hand.
“Be careful,” I said, “they have sharp beaks.”
“They’re fine,” he said with great confidence but I wasn’t so sure.
For a while it seemed he might be right. A pen gently took the pieces of bread CJ held out and he remained unscathed. Then the other birds, probably feeling left out, began to get a little impatient. Gently taking turned to snatching wildly and, as I’d predicted, CJ’s fingers took a nip from one of those sharp beaks. Somehow I resisted the temptation to say ‘I told you so.’ There’s nothing like learning from bitter experience after all.

After that he adopted the more conventional method of throwing the bread while I took photos of the resulting free for all. This year’s cygnets are full size now, more or less, but their beaks are still greyish brown rather than orange and their white feathers are still speckled with  brown. They can hold their own in the scramble for bread though.

A few times I looked across the river for signs of movement from the black swan hideout but there was nothing. Maybe they just weren’t hungry. Swans will only eat what they need and I imagine the people in the houses are feeding those little black cygnets quite well.

Going onto the jetty really does give the best up close and personal view of the swans, even if it does feel a little as if we are in a cage in some perverse swan zoo with the Itchen swans all coming to have a gawk at us. If I was brave enough I could have reached my hand out and stroked those snowy white feathers. Obviously I didn’t because, unlike CJ, I value my fingers.

We were down to our last scraps of bread by this time. Each dip into the bag brought expectantly upturned heads. Every crumb thrown elicited a pecking, snatching frenzy. Of course, the greedy gulls did their best to make off with what they could, mostly before it got as far as the water.

Finally, it was gone. CJ shook the last crumbs out over the water and, once they were all snapped up, the swans lost interest in us and went back to what they were doing before we interrupted them. Neither of us were feeling great so this was never going to be an epic walk. We wandered as far as the reed beds and turned for home.

The fresh air had probably done us good and the entertainment we’d had from a couple of crusts of bread really couldn’t be beaten. By the time we made it back to the new artwork the sun had moved round a little and those snow geese were sparkling fit to burst.