Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 07:59:32 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gail Mackiernan Subject: Re: mute swans In-Reply-To: <194.1819ad30.2bd8b3d6@aol.com> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit This *was* suggested during the Mute Swan meetings held in the past two years with members of the public. The problem is, the birds would have to be released in fairly protected areas (e.g., city ponds) because they are pinioned, and in twos only, so that that male-female pairs could not reform. There are frankly few takers for such a huge number of wild swans, although probably a few pairs could be relocated. But 2500? We are not the only area with Mute Swan problems. Gail Mackiernan Silver Spring, MD on 04/23/2003 11:28 PM, Katharine Patterson at Kpatter931@AOL.COM wrote: > I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. William Sladen speak to my class at Hopkins > tonight. Dr. Sladen contributed a great deal of research and teaching about > migration routes of geese and swans to the research project depicted in the > movie "Fly Away Home", and is continuing to experiment with teaching > migration to Trumpeter Swans and Whooping Cranes. His solution to the Mute > Swan problem is to one that "no one has listened to", but one that he has had > great success with in his studies. He recommends that the swans be captured, > pinioned and then released in "celibate pairs", (males with males, females > with females), so they will not reproduce. They live out their lives > contentedly and die with no offspring. Can we get anyone to listen? > > Katharine Patterson > Butler, MD > > ======================================================================= > To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com > with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey > ======================================================================= > ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================