Hi everyone, I hope you and yours are doing well.
Here in the south west of Western Australia it has been baby black swan rescue time again.
This is something I only heard about in February. Every year the Geographe Bay Wildlife Rescue in Busselton, in the south west of Western Australia, rescue black swan cygnets that have been abandoned by their parents, feeding and raising them, and then returning them to waterways, including the Leschenault Estuary near where I live.
Why is this necessary? The below information is from an article from ABC.net - ABC.net-Hundreds of cygnets found stranded at sea
An increasingly dry climate is forcing adult birds to abandon their young in search of a better food source, leaving flocks of baby swans, known as cygnets, to fend for themselves.
When cygnets are abandoned by their parents, they often migrate away from wetlands in search of water, finding themselves in the ocean and unable to fly against strong winds or swim against currents.
It is up to volunteers, in collaboration with wildlife organisation Geo Bay Wildlife Rescue, to head out to sea and scoop them up, with the team being called out on a daily basis.
In early February volunteer, Mr Fish says they had rescued 200 so far this year, with last season seeing 400 cygnets rescued.
Incredibly, when we went down to the beach to watch the Australia Day fireworks, near the outlet from the Leschenault Estuary into Koombana Bay in Bunbury, in the fading light we saw a group of swans swimming on the ocean. We couldn't see them clearly but we couldn't understand why they were there. It was only a few days later that we saw an interview on our TV news about the cygnet rescue program. Evidently this has been happening for nearly 60 years. This group of cygnets was evidently lost. I now wonder what happened to them. There is no feed for them along the ocean coast.
A few weeks later we heard that fledged cygnets were being released into the Leschenault Estuary so we went around to try and see them. We could see swans far out in the middle of the estuary but then a flock of them took off near the bank, where we hadn't seen them, when we stopped our car. Some stayed around, I think these little guys weren't fully fledged yet to fly.
Here are some photos.
With thanks to the Geo Bay Wildlife Rescue and similar organisations, it was beautiful to see these black swans living free in their natural environment.
To find out more, and how you can help them continue the wonderful work they do, not only with black swans but also other wild animals, go to -
Geo Bay Wildlife Rescue on Facebook
Here is a video so you can learn more -
I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!
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