There’s
nothing quite as exquisitely, elegantly, beautiful as a swan is there? And
Black Swans seem to take the word “gracefulness” to a whole new dusky level.
Europeans believed that all swans were white, until “gobsmacked” Dutch
explorers came across the black variety in Western Australia in 1836 (a “black
swan event” has since been used to describe an historical incident that was
unprecedented and unexpected).
The
Black Swan is a highly nomadic bird with an erratic migration pattern,
dependent on food availability and climatic conditions. It is native to
Australasia but has been reintroduced to New Zealand , where it had been hunted
to extinction.
Dee
Why Lagoon, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches was once home to a large colony of
swans which fed on the prolific sea grass. The “useless swamps” surrounding the
lagoon were systematically drained to enable urban development and the living
birds largely disappeared -their image, ironically, being retained in symbolic
form to represent the suburb (one wag believed that the swan logo should have
been replaced by the crane!)
In
recent times, small numbers of black swans have tentatively returned to the
area but dog attacks, the ingestion of fish hooks and human interference has
lead to a perilous existence.
You’re
most likely to observe Black Swans on larger bodies of water because they lose
all of their flight feathers after breeding and are unable to fly for a month.
They settle on lakes and lagoons, therefore, for relative safety. They are
almost exclusively herbivorous, feeding on aquatic, marshland and pasture
plants and algae.
Black
Swans breed mainly in the southeast and southwest of the continent, they are
monogamous and share incubation and cygnet rearing duties between the sexes.
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| Black Swan at Manly Dam |
Black swan (Cygnus Atratus)
Size:
120cm to 142cm
Weight
6kg
Wingspan:
2 metres
Breeding
Season: June to September
Clutch
size: Up to 9 eggs taking 35 days to hatch
Lifespan:
Up to 40 years.
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