 |
 |
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 > >