Royal fowl catered for Tudor tastes

Richard Collins on how swans were seen in medieval England

SWANS featured twice in a recent episode of The Tudors, the lavish TV series depicting the life and times of Henry VIII. The king, in the process of guiltily transferring his affections from Anne Boleyn to Jane Seymour, looks wistfully at a magnificent pair of swans gracing the lake beside one of his castles. It’s a mute comment on his predicament; “if you want fidelity”, the saying goes, “marry a swan”.

The pair on Henry’s lake would have seemed exotic even to an ornithologically challenged viewer because they were not the familiar mute swans of Irish ponds and lakes. Nor were they whoopers or Bewicks which visit us in winter. They were magnificent creatures with all-black bills from North America. There are two native species there, known as tundra and trumpeter swans. They differ in size and it’s difficult to be sure from a television picture which of the two was featured. Tundra swans usually have a yellow patch at the base of the bill; Henry’s pair lacked this, so they were probably trumpeters.