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Swans are lovely to look at from afar but they are nasty nasty territorial creatures if you are close.
One time a huge dove tried to get in all curious. It was sitting in my open balcony door like "may I?" and its vast size was filling out half the width of the door it frightened me a little. I was thinking of the massive poops a panicked bird like that would leave behind so I rushed to the door like in slo-mo yelling "noooooo" and that's my dumb story for today.
In my experience neither mute swans nor canada geese are in the slightest bit nasty.As a kid we used to go up to the ponds a lot, we'd spend a lot of time right near the swans. They'd eat from your hand and they'd come right up to you, but there was never any aggression.The geese are even less so because they're flock birds, and thus they share territory more easily than swans do. But swans will attack geese and other birds sometimes. That doesn't mean they'll automatically attack humans. I think it's more that people don't respect them or their territory and try to force the issue. And also that people misunderstand their body language for aggression when it is often just like a cat warns someone it's done playing. If you continue to push and ignore the warning signs, your cat will scratch or bite...swans are the same. If you respect them they respect you. And if they respect you, you can feed them by hand. And they are super cute as babies The swans that are most common here are the white mute swans. I believe they technically still belong to the Queen, thus killing one is treason. That comes from the mediaeval/tudor period when they would be killed for the royal table thus were reserved for the King's meals only...but now of course they're not eaten. They're just protected. I am not sure how common other types of swan are here - on rivers in general you mostly see the mutes.I forgot to mention before but we also have herons. They frequent the pools as well. Sometimes apparently they also visit garden ponds, where they are less popular! But the place I saw the most herons was the river Kamo in Kyoto. There were tons of them. I also remember seeing the hawks playing over the river in the spring air currents...and there were nesting swallows in the shopping arcade. I never saw an actual swallows nest until then, but it was so cute xD.
A couple of years ago we watched "Dad" crow carry a mostly empty Dorito chip bag from somewhere with Jr. in tow- find a smooth/clean patch of sidewalk, and then show Jr how to carefully "shake shake shake" the bag of chips so the crumbs fall somewhere where you can find them...
Today I was driving and saw what I thought was a dead bird in the road. But as I go past I realize it has its head lifted up. It's alive! I turn around to go get it and watch in horror as two other cars almost run over it. I get to it. It's bleeding, can't use its hind legs. It was a juvenile European starling, an invasive species here in the U.S. I'm a veterinary technician, but this is my weekend off and I'm not going to work. I took it to one of the local clinics near my house and dropped it off with them to perform a humane euthanasia. Poor little guy.
Blackcurtains, when I attended the North American Veterinary Conference in 2006, which is held in Orlando each year, I was excited to see and add the Sandhill Cranes to my list!