Made-up theories swan about

I SPEND a lot of my time on or around water and because of this I have regular encounters with swans.

The mute swan is an odd and enigmatic bird. The main thing that makes them hard to fathom is that they’re neither truly wild nor truly tame. They tolerate the company of humans, or at least some do, even to the extent of begging for food. But if the human pushes this sense of familiarity too far they react aggressively, making it quite clear that they are, in fact, wild creatures and not to be messed with.

The aggression is a complete bluff. A swan has no means of hurting a human. A peck from that blunt beak is about as painful as a pinch from a child and the stories of them breaking a person’s arm with a blow from their wing are complete myths. The mute swan is probably the heaviest bird in the world that’s capable of flight. In order to achieve this, it has had to make some evolutionary sacrifices. One of these is that its wing bones are light and brittle, filled with tiny pockets of air. A swan’s wing bone would break long before a human arm.