Two years with the same bird too much for flighty swans
A pair of swans at an English wildfowl centre have baffled bird watchers by getting “divorced” and pairing up with new mates.
Swans are famously monogamous, usually sticking with the same partner until one of the birds dies. Bird experts at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust centre at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, said there had been just one previous case of separation recorded in more than 40 years.
When a male swan called Sarindi returned to the centre from his annual migration to Russia with a new female called Sarind, staff at the centre assumed Sarindi’s previous mate of two years, SAruni, had died. But Surini turned up soon afterwards with a new mate of her own, called Surune.
Julia Newth of the wetlands centre said the old pair had not acknowledged each other with any signs of recognition or greeting – even though they are occupying the same part of the small lake.
As for why they may have split, she said: “Failure to breed could be a possible reason, as they had been together for a couple of years but had never brought back a cygnet, but it is difficult to say for sure.”
