Never ever been chased by a swan myself, whether white or black. I did once
get a slightly beady-eyed stare off one, because I wasn't throwing it any
bread, but that's about it. This covers swans of Avon to Melbourne, never
any real problems.
I do think they're snobbish, but that's another issue. (Couldn't decide then
whether to write 'snobs' or 'snobbish' - oh the valency of words.)
best
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 3:55 PM
Subject: Re: Poem: Love the wild swan, by Robinson Jeffers
> I've been chased by swans a few times, most memorably when I had rowed up
a
> tidal inlet on Long Island's North Shore to near a nest site--it was maybe
> 300 feet away on a hummocky marsh. The bird swam away from me far enough
to
> build up good speed, then flew at me, head high, and I only deflected its
> flight by raising a paddle. Still it passed maybe two feet overhead. Then
> it floated a few feet behind me as I beat a retreat, until I'd left its
> territory.
>
> Swans are wild animals first and last. They never attack just for the fun
> of it--it's always defending the cygnets, or the territory, or the nest,
> and occasionally courtship battles. I spent a summer living among swans--a
> family of them occupied the choice habitat of a freshwater stream and its
> salty estuary a few yards from the cabin I was renting. A male from the
> next teritory over would occasionally try to horn in, and the battles were
> horrific and clearly of deadly intent.
>
> The folks who gave us symbolic swans took this behavior so much for
granted
> that they didn't mention it, perhaps because their own behavior wasn't
that
> much different.
>
> European mute swans, as their name implies, were an import, brought over
on
> purpose as zoo specimens and ornaments in the 19th century. They now
> inhabit all the waters of the East Coast and much of the Great Lakes.
> They've had little impact on the two native species, the Trumpeter, which
> was never an East Coast bird, and the Tundra, which has some range overlap
> but breeds in the arctic.
>
> Mark
>
>
> At 01:00 AM 12/9/2005, you wrote:
> >Fine one Ken.
> >(From one who was attacked by a swan on a moonless night in East Hampton,
> >Long Island and knows that sound.)
> >
> >-Peter Ciccariello
> >
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Ken Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
> >To: [log in to unmask]
> >Sent: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 15:16:02 -0500
> >Subject: Re: Poem: Love the wild swan, by Robinson Jeffers
> >
> > Stephen Vincent wrote:
> >
> > >Thanks, Joe. A good one, methinks. Makes me want to wander over to Big
Sur.
> > >Tho it made me wonder if 'swans' are found along this part of the
Pacific
> > >Coast. Of large birds, I have seen egrets, sea gulls, cormorants,
herons,
> > >pelicans, geese - but Swans? Hmm.
> > >Have you seen any??
> > > >
> > You bet. Not in CA, on Long Island. This: very old, presented
> > unretouched and in the ancient florid style that made me the scop of
> > Livingston, NJ.
> >
> >SWANS ON PECONIC BAY, LONG ISLAND
> >
> >The boys are terrified, immobilized:
> >the birds whiplash their necks, wings outstretched,
> >and trumpet cries beyond indignation,
> >claiming for themselves the territory
> >of Divine Wrath with the beach itself.
> >Grab the kids! my wife yells, and under each arm
> >I scoop up one, then the other, both crying:
> >for all they have known of swans is the mythic
> >vision of grace upon the water, nothing
> >to do with the natural truth before them,
> >huge web-foot birds lurching forward like drunks,
> >their bodies weapons, intending murder.
> >
> >The swans are reflections and heritage:
> >they are literary-terpsichorean beings.
> >I was 17 when I became weightless
> >in Standing Room watching Plisetskaya,
> >the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen,
> >dance Odette/Odile, feathered lady of the lake:
> >later, learned Yeats' symbology of The Swan:
> >its beauty at Coole Park, its intimations
> >of virile terror and the nightmare of History
> >filling Leda's womb. And thought: ``Such horror
> >from something so beautiful!'', beguiled still by
> >the vision of The Swan, floating, dancing en pointe.
> >
> >When we are little, look in the mirror,
> >and hate what we see, someone may read us
> >Andersen's tale of the Ugly Duckling,
> >how it grew into a swan, filled with the grace
> >of Plisetskaya or religious implication.
> >But these on the beach neither dance nor redeem.
> >They bless not, neither do they curse: they are
> >marauders assigned a role they will not live.
> >They leave the water and reject our grace,
> >renounce the role of icon: and, too stupid
> >to know they are symbols of an ideal beauty,
> >settle instead for hating what is not them.
> >
> >KTW/6-8-91
> >
> >-- Kenneth Wolman
> >Proposal Development Department
> >Room SW334
> >Sarnoff Corporation
> >609-734-2538
> >
> > I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up
> > where I needed to be.
> >-Douglas Adams
> >
> >
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