Swans of Prospect Park Go From Elegant to Homicidal

[calvorn]

September 30, 2009, 7:30 am
By Jennifer 8. Lee AND Jeremy Zilar



At 60 acres, Prospect Park Lake would seem to be big enough for two pairs of swans. And for a while, it was. One pair kept happily to the south end, and the other struck around the northern half, their white feathers contrasting with the greens and browns of the park, to the delight of picnickers and wedding parties.

But this year, both pairs had families, and that neighborly dynamic came to a fast — and surprisingly violent — halt.

The couple in the southern end of the lake, raising four brown cygnets, are trying to drive out the other family, which has one cygnet. The southern father — wings beating, back hunched and neck extended — streaks across the lake with a wake behind him and repeatedly jumps on members of the other family. It looks like he’s trying to drown them. Sometimes he has the help of the mother and their offspring. All appear to be males, and some are almost as large as their parents.

Shocked to see the serene, gliding, elegant creatures suddenly turn homicidal, Brooklyn residents, from neighboring Park Slope to Sunset Park, have stepped in, trying to break up the fights and even calling city and state agencies for help. But officials and animal experts say the residents’ concern is misplaced. After all, this is how nature sometimes plays out. They are refusing to take action.

And so the battle rages on.

Ed Bahlman, 59, and his companion, Anne-Katrin Titze, 42, describe the swans’ aggressive behavior and do what they can to help the swans that are chased from the water.

“It’s not that they are mean birds,” said Susan B. Elbin, an ornithologist with New York City Audubon who has studied mute swans, the species that is sparring in Prospect Park. “Mute swans, of all the swans, are highly territorial.”

Walking in the park in early September, Anne-Katrin Titze, 42, and her companion, Ed Bahlman, 59, watched the aggressor male land on top of the rival family’s cygnet and try to force him under the water. “It was just, seeing the little one fly and seeing this attack — I couldn’t forget that,” said Ms. Titze, who teaches literature at Hunter College. “It was so awful.”

Since then, Ms. Titze and Mr. Bahlman said, they have traveled 45 minutes from their home in Sunset Park nearly every day, spending hours trying to protect the family under siege. And they are not alone in their intervention: the front line of the swan war forms on the northern side of the Audubon Center.

There, they and others step in between the swans and chase away the aggressors. When the aggressors drive the other family 50 yards from the water, the onlookers bring them cups of water, hoping to keep them from becoming dehydrated.

Over the weekend, Mr. Bahlman and others wrestled with the swans and tried to move them to a smaller lake across a path. But one broke free, returning to the first lake, and they abandoned the effort.

Ms. Titze and Mr. Bahlman have named the single cygnet in the northern family Honey Bear because, as Ms. Titze put it, “He makes bear sounds.” (Mute swans are not mute, but they do make rough grunting, hissing and snorting noises.) The southern swan they simply call the “monster.” Other neighbors refer to him as the “murderous male.”

Despite residents’ frantic calls about the small war, city and state agencies have been hands-off.

“I can understand it’s disturbing to people, and no one ever wants to see wildlife going after each other,” said Eugene Patron, a spokesman for the Prospect Park Alliance. “But they really shouldn’t get in the way of things. It probably stressed the whole situation.”

Dr. Elbin echoed that assessment. “Giving it food and rooting for the swan — that doesn’t work,” she said. “One animal is going to win, and one animal is going to lose.”

The equilibrium was probably tipped by a highly successful breeding season for the southern couple. Courtney Scanlon, 35, a Prospect Park regular who has been following the swan families for several months, said Honey Bear’s family originally had three cygnets, though two died for reasons apparently unrelated to the aggression.

“This used to be their territory,” she said, gesturing to the wide expanse of the lake north of the bridge.

Then, the larger family with the four cygnets (originally five), started moving in — perhaps because they felt strength in numbers. “I think they are all boys; they are strong,” she said.

The fight for dominance is just a part of creating a successful habitat for wildlife, biologists note. Mute swans are native to Europe, so city park officials were cheered when they started breeding in Prospect Park in the late 1980s.

“This is something incredibly natural happening in the middle of Prospect Park,” Dr. Elbin said. “It’s as exciting as watching a National Geographic documentary.”