This male mute swan which I have named as the ' Tehidy Tyrant ' is part of a territorial pair on Tehidy's main pond, The pair have a problem that as many as twenty to thirty other swans are attracted to this pond by the daily hand-out of food from park visitors so they keep on returning.
The male demonstrates almost constant daily aggression to the other swans singling them out one at a time to corner and attack and during my visit it chased one out of the pond and along the entire pond walkway into the woods where it stood an top of the other exhausted and shocked bird peaking relentlessly at its head, eyes and neck.
I have seen this sort of attack in other locations before and if not stopped it can result in the more submissive bird being killed or blinded so a little intervention was required to separate these birds.
Other subjects encountered included :
There were five resident Little Grebes present on Tehidy's big pond yesterday and they seemed to never stop fishing successfully for Three Spined Stickleback and its a wonder that the fish stocks manage to reproduce quickly enough to survive.
Moorhen were abundant both in and out of the water and a lone Jay was perched watching to see where the resident squirrels hid their peanuts with a view to raiding them later.
It would be difficult to ignore the cheeky Squirrels or the Xmas Robin at Tehidy both of which will quite happily take nuts directly from visitors and posing for photos comes as standard behaviour.
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