Swan Keepers

I've been intrigued by the swans in Bray Harbour, and the people who feed them, for many years. My old friend TP has photographed them several times.

The swans are a garrulous bunch, and there might well have been 'nine and fifty' of them, the urban counterpart to Yeats's Wild Swans At Coole. As I walked among them with my snouty, interfering camera, I was nipped at least once (luckily I was wearing a thick jumper). I could hear the swan-expletives coming at me from all sides; just as well I am far from fluent (I don't even speak pigeon-swan). The many locals who feed them remind me of zoo-keepers, especially those devoted enough to find appropriate food (corn, seeds, etc.) rather than bread.

Between feedings, the car park and beach go relatively quiet, though there is a perpetual suspense, something, perhaps, between an emergency waiting room and soup kitchen. When someone scatters crumbs or whatever, there is a sudden furious, milling flurry; swans waddle quickly into the fray like bull-headed shoppers at a fire-sale, and pigeons, gulls, crows and others complicate the quacking, whirring air and crowd the pavement, getting under the swans large, froggy, sewer-grey feet. The swans don't seem to care, though they do nip at each other's necks quite a bit.

Their incipient violence --long, muscular, snaky necks, hard (serrated) beaks -- made it seem odd that they were wrangling over corn feed or bread. You could see the dinosaur in them, ripping fish (or aquatic lizards) to pieces. You don't fu*k with swans.

More here, if anyone's interested.