It all started out innocently enough, the banders came over for dinner after a lovely afternoon on the Captain John Boat seeing many whales and birds. After dinner they went down to the dock for a bit of fishing, the light was so pretty, one of our perfect days.
Jess fishing.
Ian and Evan going over bait options.
Our cat Milo joining in.
The swan family makes an appearance on the right.
Evan notices that one of the cygnets has fishing line wrapped all over him, he's having trouble with his leg and neck.
Banders to the rescue. If there's a situation where bird banders can come in handy this is one of them!
The tactic is to lure the injured bid in while avoiding being attacked by the daddy swan. Bread, and lots of it, to the daddy should work.
Ian sees his chance and grabs for the cygnet! Jess is still trying to distract what can be a very aggressive male swan.
Ian says if you grab a swan by the neck, while supporting the rest of the body, they don't struggle as much. Who knew? Evan dashes to the other dock.
Evaluating the damage, but the daddy swan started attacking so they moved up to higher ground. There's a fence at the water's edge to keep the geese out and thankfully the daddy swan didn't come up on land.
Here it was easier to see what was going on with the fishing line.
Turns out the cygnet had swallowed some abandoned fishing line and a possible lure, maybe hook. It was down it's throat, so Ian, Jess and Evan cut off all the line they could from around it's body. The part that went down it's throat had to be left. Trevor later said that swans have very hardy digestive systems and it may be able to dissolve the foreign object.
Great skill is needed and these were the right people for the job!
Picture time with cute baby swan, sorry, cygnet.
A sweet little guy.
Milo wanted to play, too...
Such a long neck!
An armful.
Time to go back to his family.
Everyone's happy, the cygnet can swim again and we saw him 5 days later doing well.
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