A lady in Sevenoaks Road Langney, returned home to find a swan in her fish pond yesterday (Monday 1st November 2021).
The lady called East Sussex WRAS and rescuers Keith Ring attended in one of our veterinary ambulances. On arrival he found this juvenile Mute Swan swimming in a rather small pond.
This particular area of Eastbourne is well known for swans crash landing. The wide variety of ground cover of houses, rivers, wetlands, grassland, roads, etc encourages turbulence. This time of year young swans are flying with L plates on and are not use to the turbulence and some times get caught out, causing them to crash land.
"I doubt the swan landed in the garden because of the pond, but obviously thought it would make a nice temporary home whilst trying to figure out how to get out the garden" said Keith.
Not far from here is Princes Park Eastbourne which has a non-territorial flock of swans, and youngsters fly in and out of this location and often have to cross over this area resulting in some of them crash landing. We have had them flying into the side of lorries and being hit by cars on the Lottbridge Drove dual carriageway just to the southeast.
Although there are various reasons why swans crash land, it is now thought less likely that swans crash on roads thinking they are rivers when wet but more due to turbulence or other factors like being bitten by leaches at sensitive skin areas like the eyes or due to other underlying health conditions.
The young swan on this occasion was checked over, was a good weight, and had no injuries so was released at the nearby non-territorial flock at Princes Park.
I would urge anyone who sees a swan crash to seek advice and not to just pick the swan up and release it on a near by water source. Swans are territorial so this can lead to fighting if released in the wrong area. A 8-10kg swan can cause serious internal injuries by crash landing, and these may not be externally visible and may even be able to walk still. Get the swan safe, encourage the swan off any roads or dangerous areas, but try to contain the swan where possible. Call a rescue organisation for advice before taking any further action.
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