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Six wood skiffs set out from the city of Sunbury-on-Thames this month on a five-day mission with a single aim: to uphold one in every of Britain’s extra obscure royal traditions and report again to the king on what number of swans he owns.
And this yr, due to an outbreak of avian flu, in addition to encounters with animals and aggressive people, the numbers weren’t good.
“It is rather disappointing,” David Barber, who has been the monarch’s official swan marker for 3 many years and wears a swan feather in his cap, stated of this yr’s depend.
The annual expedition alongside a 79-mile stretch of the River Thames, often called the “swan upping,” traces its origins to a centuries-old English legislation that provides the reigning monarch the fitting to assert any unmarked mute swans present in open waters. These days, it serves extra as a census of the fowl and a wildlife conservation effort.
The counters on the River Thames recorded 94 cygnets, as younger swans are known as, in comparison with 155 final yr. That’s a roughly 40 p.c drop, and a fear for conservators and animal lovers alike.
Mr. Barber stated he didn’t count on this yr’s depend to be fairly as little as it was, and that the numbers have been probably the most disappointing in years. He added that 2009 was a worse yr, when the uppers counted 84 younger swans. The depend was 166 cygnets in 2021 and 147 cygnets in 2019, he added. (The annual occasion didn’t occur in 2020 due to the pandemic.)
One of many causes for the decline is avian flu. There have been 190 confirmed circumstances of chook flu in the UK since October final yr, with a overwhelming majority of them in England.
However there was additionally excellent news: Despite the fact that the variety of cygnets was low, they have been all in wonderful well being, Mr. Barber stated.
To depend the swans, the flotilla of skiffs row up the Thames for 5 days. When the uppers see a breeding pair of swans or a cygnet, they place their boats across the birds, carry them from the water with their arms and examine in the event that they’re wholesome and freed from accidents. They match the cygnets with a hoop bearing identification numbers, after which launch them again into the water.
All of it comes with fairly a little bit of flapping.
Within the twelfth century, the crown claimed possession over the mute swans, which have been typically served at banquets. (Consuming swans was made unlawful in 1981, after they grew to become protected as a wild chook.) Whereas the king can declare any unmarked mute swans in open water, he shares the swans of the Thames with two livery firms, or historical London commerce guilds, whose birds are marked.
The long-necked birds, present in waterways across the nation, nonetheless take pleasure in a particular place in English society.
They’re an “ingrained factor within the British psyche,” stated Melanie Nelson, a trustee on the Swan Sanctuary, a corporation that cares for sick and injured swans and waterfowl.
“Everybody has grown up with swans being within the background,” she stated. “For them to not be there may be an appalling thought.”
Right this moment, swans face different risks, within the type of viruses like avian flu, different animals and people. Swans typically get attacked by canine who enter the water, Ms. Nelson stated. Even a seemingly small damage to a swan might be life-threatening, she stated.
People have posed a hazard to swans as effectively. There was a rise over the previous couple of years in assaults on swans, in keeping with studies from the British information media.
In a number of incidents since 2020, swans have been discovered decapitated. And greater than as soon as just lately, swans have been the sufferer of catapult assaults, together with in January when 4 have been killed by what the BBC described as “ball bearing catapults.”
This yr’s depend was the primary throughout King Charles III’s reign, however the transition appears to have been clean.
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