HEAD HERDSMAN DAVE WHEELER AT ABBOTSBURY SWANNERY DORSET SEXES A CYGNET Abbotsbury Swannery’s Head Herdsman, Dave Wheeler, works flat out giving cygnet rings to hundreds of baby swans during just two months of the summer. At the world famous swannery in Dorset, all the tiny cygnets have to be tagged shortly after they hatch, so they can be matched with their mums and dads to ensure that babies who go astray can be reunited with their parents Part of Dave’s job is to collect the cygnets in a large net and then fit each one with a tiny metal tag after the baby swans have been sexed. Femal
HEAD HERDSMAN DAVE WHEELER AT ABBOTSBURY SWANNERY DORSET SEXES A CYGNET Abbotsbury Swannery’s Head Herdsman, Dave Wheeler, works flat out giving cygnet rings to hundreds of baby swans during just two months of the summer. At the world famous swannery in Dorset, all the tiny cygnets have to be tagged shortly after they hatch, so they can be matched with their mums and dads to ensure that babies who go astray can be reunited with their parents Part of Dave’s job is to collect the cygnets in a large net and then fit each one with a tiny metal tag after the baby swans have been sexed. Females are tagged on the right web and males on the left. 57 year old Dave, who has worked at the swannery for nearly 20 years and has tagged thousands of birds, said “This has been a particularly busy year and we have had 130 nests and it is a job to keep tabs on everybody, but we have to do it. With so many cygnets running around the place, we have to have a system to reunite the cygnets with their parents when they get lost.” “Sadly, many of the cygnets do not make it to the end of the summer because of various factors, but mainly due to predators such as foxes, badgers, crows and even mink.” Abbotsbury lies on an eight mile long lagoon and is the only place in the world where you are able to walk through such a large colony of nesting mute swans. It was established by Benedictine monks around 1040, where they farmed the beautiful birds to produce food for their lavish banquets at St Peter’s Monastery, where they lived close to the village of Abbotsbury. Later on in the year Dave’s job starts all over again, when he has to round up all the cygnets that have dispersed in the lagoon to put adult rings on them. END MIKE WALKER 2010
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Photo credit: © MIKE WALKER / Alamy / Afripics
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